Jersey

July 13, 2020.  I have an early press time today, so I’ve seen nothing new from Governor Inslee since he tweeted at the Space Needle in appreciation of its “Mask Up” flag (“Thanks @space_needle, I couldn’t have said it better myself.”). As of this weekend, Washington State has 40,656 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,438 deaths, meaning that about 3.5% of Washingtonians diagnosed with the virus have died. Mountlake Terrace, just north of Seattle (if you live here and have been in charge of a small child in the last couple of decades, you know it as the town with the “good pool”), plans to mail two masks to every address in the city’s ZIP code. Over the weekend, Florida set a new single-day new case record of 15,300, and if was a country, it would have more cases than any other country except for Brazil, India, and…the rest of the United States. So, they decided to open Disney World! On Sunday, there were no reported deaths in New York City for the first time since mid-March. Britain and France are weighing whether to make mask-wearing mandatory).

And today I am wearing Jersey eau de parfum by Chanel.

Fourth-to-last Chanel Les Exclusifs Monday! As with Eau de Cologne, I am unable to find the Nazi dick joke in this one, as Jersey was named merely as tribute to the fact that jersey is a fabric that Coco Chanel liked. More than liked, actually, she revolutionized it, and with it, the way women dressed. The knit fabric was first produced in medieval times on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands of the coast of Normandy. In 1913, Chanel opened her first clothing boutique in Deauville, France—her first boutique at 31 rue Cambon opened in 1910 sold hats and accessories—where she unveiled her line of women’s sportswear. The line featured garments made from jersey, which had until then been used almost exclusively to make men’s underwear. The fabric was incredibly inexpensive in a time when silk and other traditional fabrics were war-rationed, required little seaming, draped well, and was particularly suited to Chanel’s simple and practical designs. Fashion was forever changed. As designer Karl Lagerfeld, who was the fashion house’s chief designer from 1982-2000, said “It is underwear. Chanel became famous because she made dresses out of jersey. Jersey was men’s underwear material and it was much more shocking in those days because women weren’t supposed to know that men wore underwear. And Chanel made dresses from them. Today everyone knows that we have tights, bathing suits and strings under our clothes it’s a part of our everyday life.” Jersey-the-fragrance was created by then in-house perfumer Jacques Polge in 2011 and is described by the company as a perfume that “reveals the feminine treasures of lavender by combining it with bourbon vanilla in a creamy accord heightened by notes of white musk. A scent of life and joy.” Or, maybe not, as Jersey does not have a lot of fans among my usual sources. Victoria Frolova gives it the only one-star rating I have seen from her and is, for the gentle soul she usually is, absolutely scathing: “To put it mildly, I am baffled by this scent, which is an orchestration of excellent ingredients that ends up smelling like a cheap Duane Reade candle…the character of the perfume does not match with its concept, for there is nothing soft and comforting about it. The more Jersey develops on the skin, the sharper and scratchier it feels. I doubt that Coco Chanel would have been pleased.” Gaia, writing at her beauty and fashion blog The Non Blonde says, “Jersey’s effect doesn’t smell like a real perfume. It’s too similar to what I’d smell if I used scary amounts of Downy® Simple Pleasures® Lavender Serenity Liquid fabric softener and nothing else. I don’t and I won’t. The Powers That Be at Chanel should be aware that this kind of scent is what one buys at Target for $5.99.” Robin at Now Smell This read Gaia’s review and adds, “I’m afraid she is being too kind.” Persolaise, a new-to-me blogger says that Jersey “is a scent towards which I find it very difficult to be charitable.” Luca Turin, contrarian that he is, likes it a bit better, saying that Jersey “bookends lavender with a big backstop of metallic violet leaf and adds more jasmine. This is lavender in a Prussian dress uniform, with monocle and riding crop.”

Fragrantica lists these notes for Jersey, not broken out into top, heart, and base: Lavender, musk, vanilla, wildflowers, grass, rose, jasmine, tonka bean.

I’m with Victoria, Robin, and Persolaise on this one: I really, really don’t like it. The lavender-vanilla combo invites inevitable comparisons to Guerlain’s Jicky, and Jersey comes up so very short that it almost seemed unfair to have compared it to such a masterpiece. But then I remembered that this is Chanel and that they’re asking $200 for 2.5 ounces of it…and then I just got mad. As both Frolova and Gaia said, the lavender here really is reminiscent of an industrial fragrance: sharp, synthetic, unpleasantly metallic and weirdly sour. The vanilla is overly-sweet, as if to compensate, and the musk is sickly and thick and just makes it worse. Forget Jicky, I have a lavender-vanilla body wash I got at Walgreen’s for like eight bucks that is miles and miles better than this stuff. The best thing I can say about it is that it seems to have the same longevity issues that other of the Les Exclusifs have had for me, so while wearing it has been a little torturous, at least it hasn’t lasted very long. Not only can I not believe that a genius like Jacques Polge came up with this even on his worst day, I can’t believe that there wasn’t anyone else at Chanel willing to stop it. As I say ad nauseum, smell is subjective, we like what we like and dislike what we dislike, and an “authority” opinion is no more or less valuable than yours or mine. But there’s something incredibly satisfying about hating something that experts you respect hate too, and for that alone I have to throw Jersey just a tiny bit of affection. –Lisa Whipple