Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey by Norman Rockwell, 1917.
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope this old painting gives us animal enthusiasts some peace. 
Cousin Reginald was a comic character created by Norman Rockwell. He, like his creator, was from the city but wasn’t above taking the time to appreciate the wholesome country living scene. (Source=Saturday Evening Post)
Today I’m reviewing a modern classic: Chanel’s 31 Rue Cambon. It was named after Coco Chanel’s Paris apartment.
31 Rue Cambon, released as part of Chanel’s Les Exclusifs line in 2008, is known for being a chypre made without oakmoss. To me, that woodsy oakmoss note is the heart of a chypre, and 31 Rue Cambon smells too ladylike to claim the name. It’s a very soft and wearable perfume, containing plenty of surprises and gentle overtones.
The most outstanding notes are the top notes, bergamot and citrus. The mixture gives off a bit of a marine effect, without that tired marine note. There’s also the signature Chanel iris note, as March mentions in Perfume Posse. I can pick out some herbal accents too. I think that if you’re someone who is attuned to your perfume you can pick out a new note each time you wear this.
31 Rue Cambon gets even more feminine in the heart, evolving into a sort of powdery rose. I was wearing it as I did sit-ups and I received a huge powdery blast. This is impressive, since 31 Rue Cambon doesn’t come in a strong formulation and I’d had it on for at least an hour. The heart is lovely.
Through the evolution of the fragrance and lasting for hours at the base is the most virtuous amber I’ve ever smelled. Amber, you see, is generally a throaty, huge note that is based on ambergris, a substance that comes from the stomachs of whales. 31 Rue Cambon deserves a lot of credit for tying all of these unrelated notes together and making them all smell equally dainty. Perfumer Christine Nagel managed a similar feat when she tied loose notes together under the same premise and made it work in Si, Lolita and Delices de Cartier. In those two cases I didn’t love the notes themselves. The main problem here is different: while the notes are high-quality, the technical aspect isn’t as good as when Nagel uses this structure. Tania Sanchez in Perfumes: The Guide refers to 31 Rue Cambon as a “slightly inchoate thing”, and she’s right. There are a lot of fragments in here, but even though the baseline is beautiful it fails to coalesce. Art is a really frustrating thing: you can have perfect ideas and imperfect technical work or vice versa, and the result is almost great but not quite.
Perfumer: Jacques Polge
Price Range: Expensive
Recommended Occasion: Any
Release Year: 2007
My Rating: 8
A lot of bloggers reviewed this before I did. Here’s some:
Perfume Posse, Muse in Wooden Shoes, Perfume Smellin’ Things, Olfactoria’s Travels