CLEOPATRA'S BOUDOIR

Sweet and voluptuous, an intense fragrance of absolute femininity. Created by CHANEL Master Perfumer Ernest Beaux in 1925, GARDÉNIA is an olfactive ode to the camellia, Mademoiselle Chanel's favorite flower. A vanilla base rises to meet a heart of sweet fruit and creamy gardenia petals, accented with coconut. Sending the scent aloft: the crisp greens of the flower's morning leaves. - By Chanel

I definitely smell the gardenia accord in this fragrance, it sticks out like a sore thumb and mixes with violets and aldehydes to create an ethereal gardenia/tuberose note rival to Rober Piguet's Fracas. The vanilla drydown is a pleasant surprise as the gardenia and the vanilla go very well together. A very green mossy vetiver note mixed with narcissus is present as is a civet like note that I detect.  I am using a 1950s perfume nip for this review and I dont know how it compares to today's Gardenia by Chanel.

Gardenia is gorgeous floral bouquet and an admirable example of  the talent of the great perfume creator, Ernest Beaux. . Gardenia was relaunched in 1980-es together with other exclusive perfumes - Bois des Iles and Cuir de Russie. The reconstructed version is very similar to the original (vintage). At the time of Ernest Beaux synthetic materials technology was still undeveloped, and due to synthetic notes the new version of Gardenia is more modern and not at all that heavy and strong as expected from white flowers. The elegance of Gardenia is timeless.

Natural fragrance of gardenia can not be distillated, and in this composition it is substituted by fragrances of orange blossom, and jasmine, succored by sweet tuberose note. In the base of the composition, beside musk, there are woody notes of patchouli, vetiver and sandal. Today, Gardenia comes as eau de parfum and eau de toilette. The official notes of the modern perfume are:

jasmine, gardenia, orange blossom, tuberose, clove, sage, pimento, musk, patchouli, sandalwood and vetiver.