I knew Chanel was opening a new boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and I saw it under construction. However, nothing prepared me for the experience of walking in Saturday to see it "live." Every other store in the area is going to have a very hard time competing with this Chanel exhibition. My photos are a bit dark. Only a professional photographer could have photographed this interior space to adequately represent its grandeur.
You can enter paradise from two doors, one close to the perfume center and one from the main aisle. No matter how you enter, you aren't going to believe the new, luxurious space. We think of Chanel as luxury makeup. Now it has a luxury home in the DC area.
Interested in color? Look no further than these bars, with nice stools you can use to sit and sample.
Drawn to skin care? The display will wow you.
I had gone to pick up Chanel's new Les Exclusifs de Chanel 1932 fragrance. Its inspiration lies in the first collection of fine Chanel jewelry that was presented in 1932.
The composition of the new 1932 fragrance is floral with a focus on jasmine. It opens with fresh citrus flavors that include aldehydes, bergamot, and neroli. The heart is a heady floral, composed of jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, lilac, and carnation. The base is sweet, woody, and resinous with notes of vetiver, orris, sandalwood, opoponax, incense, vanilla, coumarin, ambrette, musk, and iralia molecule that possesses the character of iris and violet (description from
Fragrantica). I will write my impressions later.
The fragrance bar in the new boutique presents all of Chanel's fragrances at a specially designed station with each scent embodied in a ceramic tube. For all of you who have called Georgia, but never seen her, here she is arranging the tubes just so.
When you remove the ceramic tubes (blotters) from the bar, you smell the fragrance as it is designed to smell on the skin and after the top notes have departed. I think I smelled all of the blotters Saturday. I fell in love with a few Exclusifs I had never experienced, and I'm sure I'll be very tempted to buy them when Exclusifs guru Christian arrives this coming weekend for a special event. If you would like an appointment with him, just call Georgia, Loyd, or Maria at (240) 497-5363 or (240) 497-5301. He will be available Friday afternoon and Saturday.
I was absolutely blown away by my first visit to this Chanel palace. I doubt the special feeling will ever go away. This space is remarkable.
Photos by Best Things in Beauty, except Chanel brooch (source lost)
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24 comments:
Wow! Will they get the LEs that go to studios?
Thank you for these great photos. I love the idea of ceramic blotters to smell the fragrance and I am sooo curious about 1932. I was able to smell some Les Exclusifs recently and really liked Beige, Eau de Cologne, Bel Respiro and to some extent Jersey. The SA encouraged me to mix them as well.
The make-up display against the white looks like the European Chanel cosmetics displays.
Have a great Sunday.
Tanja
In the words of Liz Lemon, "I want to go to there." I am anxious to hear impressions about 1932. I have been eagerly awaiting its release. I adore Les Exclusifs. On the upside, Le Volume mascara was just released here and I got it in Bleu. Looks so much like the LE Blue Moon from 10 years ago. Have been dreaming about that colour since then!
Hi
i would have been in beauty heaven surrounded by all the chanel products
Ava, yes! They are getting Versailles in soon - now that they are ready.
Tanja, I adore 1932. I will try to write about it this week. I find fragrance features very hard to write, but I'll work on it soon.
Hey Melanie,
Love the reference to Liz Lemon. She will be missed.
Hi Beano,
Yep, beauty heaven. :)
Swoooooon.... lucky you!
x
Wow how awesome and beautiful. I would so love to be able to go somewhere where there is such a place. Alas the opportunities are few. Thanks for sharing all this
that's how i used to feel walking into i. magnin
i hope to visit this little slice of heaven
Much prettier than the one on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, CA.
Thanks for the wonderful preview. I definitely need to check this out!
I have seen this in a dream. I am seriously telling you that I have dreams that look like this! In my dream, I am in a department store, always at night. The inside of the store is dark as it is close to closing time and there are few shoppers, however, there is a crowd around a certain area. I make my way through the crowd and amidst all the black, brilliant color comes to my eyes in lipsticks, lipgloss, eye shadows, blushers! A riot of color after all the darkness. I see so many colors I want to explore. I AM in Heaven! This is it! And then I wake up..... I can't tell you the number of times I've had that same dream during my lifetime, and now, here it is in reality. I'll have to take a trip to see this myself! Thanks for making my day.
Christy,
That's how I was feeling to be there on the first day of this marvelous space. Lucky.
Hi angusmum1!
I was told that this was one of only three build-outs like it - probably in the U.S.
Oh LSBD, I so miss that store!
Hi Goddesslily Seymour,
Wow!
I hope you can go there, ScentedHound.
Anonymous,
That is absolutely amazing. Shocking! You should start copyrighting your dreams! Your dreams are much better than mine. :)
I so know what you mean, LoveSugarBabyDoll, about the feeling one got when walking into I. Magnin. So many stores are pushing that upbeat, energetic and modern feel. Sometimes they almost feel frenetic and drive me out (the MAC counter at Nordstrom). It seems to me that that old world elegance is missing today. That wonderful feeling that you were entering a world that finally understood you, as a woman. Ever since I was a child I have always noticed that when I walk into a department store and am immediately enveloped in the scent of expensive perfume and leather (the shoe and handbag department) that I immediately relax and feel that this is where I belong. Where to go to find that again?
Thank you CG! I have had numerous dreams that are so vivid and detailed that I knew I should have written them down as I could have written and entire story around it. Ones that could be made in movies. I don't know why I have dreams that are so very incredibly detailed, sometimes they even have a fragrance. Maybe I have a brain tumor! Just joking, I've had dreams like this for decades.
Anon,
"Get out!" Remember that phrase?
I am so jealous. My dreams are bizarre. I have started to write them down. Not always, but I grab my iPad and document them. Maybe I can put them together someday.
Yes, I do! It's good to write down what you can remember but I have discovered that emphasizing what and how you FELT during the dream is even more important to figuring out what it means. I figured out one of my oldest recurring dreams this way and once I did, it never came back. So, be sure to record how you felt in the dream, what was the main emotion and you may be able to see that same emotion pop up in dreams that are very visually different, but the emotion remains the same in all of them. Once you know what you are feeling, you can link it to something that has happened or will happen in life that you are dwelling on, either subconsciously or unconsciously. (I forget the difference between the two.) Often for me, it is something that happened that I am having trouble processing or accepting. It is in acceptance of things that have happened, especially events that we did not like or want, the acceptance of what happened is where we find peace.
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