Intellectually Rigorous: 1957 by Chanel

If 1957 by Chanel were a mood, it would be a flash of mental clarity. It has the ergonomic purity of museum buildings built by architects dreaming of an android future, but none of their sterility. It just feels like noise falling away. I hesitate to say that any white musk material smells expensive, because those materials are generally quite cheap, but this particular combination smells like it went to school in Switzerland and has a twelve-step Korean skincare regimen. The musk – or more likely musks plural – smell thick and silky, like the air pumped through the vents of a five star hotel. After spending much time with 1957 over the past year, I think what’s remarkable is not so much its smoothness but the absence of things that don’t belong, like a scratchy aromachemical or an annoying lactone. When the lily is enough, you stop gilding. And that is what you pay Chanel prices for. The scent is built on an impressively layered sub-structure of aldehydes, which, on paper at least,…