Chanel Boy: a new fragrance from the house that Coco built

Perfume speaks to your soul, not your gender. That’s why we love Boy, the new Chanel Exclusif.

Today is not the brightest of days. The weather sucks, the day is dragging on and we have to wait until June to get a whiff of the new Chanel Les Exclusifs addition: Boy Chanel.

Boy, the second spritz created by legendary Chanel perfumer Jacques Polge’s son Olivier Polge (Olivier’s first was last year’s Misia), is tapping into a growing appreciation of genderless (and gender-bending) style.

Fragrance is no different than other things fashion and beauty, so it makes sense that women who are drawn to iconic guy style are also drawn to masculine scents too (whether stolen from their partner’s collection or purchased intentionally at the perfume counter). Les Exclusifs de Chanel Boy, is a classic men’s scent, but it’s being marketed to women.

“My way of working on this fragrance was really not to make a unisex fragrance, but really more to dive into men’s fragrance… and to show how well it could be worn by a woman,” Polge junior told wwd.com,

He likens the effect to a woman pulling on her boyfriend’s shirt—a masculine article or clothing, but undeniably sexy on a woman.

Here at The Whale & The Rose, we women wear men’s scents regularly—after all, we don’t see the world through pink and blue-tinted glasses—but it’s not so often we see fragrances marketed as unisex. More often, we see “Pour Homme” or “Pour Femme” labelled bottles, and if that’s not the case, the ad campaigns make it clear who the target audience is. We however, advocate the purchasing of perfume that suits your soul, regardless of your gender. A woody spritz on a woman: of course. A floral for your man: absolutely.

Polge’s Boy is right on trend—and brand. It was Chanel, after all, who gave women the okay to borrow tweed, jersey, suit jackets and trousers from the man’s side of the closet.

The fragrance is named for Arthur “Boy” Capel, Gabrielle Chanel’s lover and benefactor. As for the scent itself? We have yet to smell it, but the fragrance’s starting point was a classic masculine fougere accord (a blend of lavender, oakmoss and coumarin) combined with notes of grapefruit, orange blossom, sandalwood, vanilla and musk. We’re hoping for freshness, warmth and woods.