Chanel Chance Eau Vive perfume review

By Deborah Fulsang

Gabrielle Coco Chanel would have loved rapini. I feel it in my bones. That bitter green, laced with garlic, olive oil, a dollop of butter and fresh ground pepper. I think she would have loved its bite, its bitterness, its personality.

I bring it up because I too think she would have also loved the wonderful bitter bite of grapefruit that opens the brand’s new Chance Eau Vive perfume. The fourth spritz in Chanel’s Chance franchise—which began a dozen years ago and has been followed up by Chance Eau Tendre and Chance Eau Fraîche—celebrates risk taking and surprise. It’s a bright and delightful scent, which greets you with a lively grapefruit-blood orange accord and then moves to a jasmine and white musk identity before echoing that citrus hello with vetiver, and a cedar-iris accord.

It’s fun and young and cheeky. And no, it doesn’t smell like rapini. It smells pretty, but not typical, which we think is a very good thing.

After all, there’s only one consonant differentiating the name Chanel from the word Chance, which say the Chanel scribes, “surely…[creates] a phonetic affinity that gives the impression they belong to the same family.

“Mademoiselle Chanel often said that chance only comes to those who know how to recognize it, carried by a gust of optimism.”

That word too, optimism, could be used to describe this perfume, which by the way would make a great addition to any fragrance wardrobe looking for a fresh summer addition.

Chanel Chance Eau Vive EDT, $88 (50 ml), at all Chanel Beauty Counters, www.chanel.com

Check out the new Chance Eau Vive fragrance ad campaign crafted by Jean-Paul Goude. Cheeky and fun (and a little cheesy), the film centres on a young beauty who strives to be on the Chanel Chance bowling team. Yes, bowling. Perfume bottles replace bowling pins, in this little moment of creative fragrance fantasy. Enjoy.