Paris-Venise
Chanel (2018)

It's too light and boring for my taste. The entire Paris line is a miss for me. Non-offensive and unisex, but the performance is bad.

This is a happy melange, watery but not weak, powdery and clean but also bright from the neroli & sweet berries. Equal parts green-white-soapy-clean-floral-sweet. The iris has been scrubbed of its richer, spicier, fuller buttery facets, it's so crisp it almost hurts. Paris-Venise trying a little too hard to please everyone and almost succeeds. Good sillage, but not a strong fragrance so you can spray liberally, feels fun to apply on a night in and disappears quickly too.

Like when those brutally clever AI make a composite of attractive faces and the result is manque, Paris-Venise is, in the end, nothing more than a well-heeled stranger.

Nope, this didn't grab me. I agree with other reviews saying that it's a No. 5 redux. But instead of the beautiful complexity of No. 5, it's just neroli with a dash of vanilla dryer sheet. No. 5 on a hugely reduced formula cost.

Powdery citrus & berries - now this, is different! Femininity to the max. Neroli is well-mannered. Wispy iris. The geranium is almost timid here, nearly sugared out of existence.
Everything mixes beautifully so far. Delightful. Modern. There are teeny-tiny little peaks of green stem or leaf, here and there, and in the background.
Ever so slight cedar. Either that, or it is integrated well with the amber accord and vanilla.
Soft and cozy like the second-hand, cashmere sweater I once owned in my 20's. A beautiful Chanel, indeed!

Paris-Venise is probably the prettiest of Chanel's three new colognes. They definitely take its cologne concentration seriously, as it takes many, many sprays to get much out of this.

So what does it smell like? It's kind of a lemony redux of No 5, with its powdery lemon champagne topnotes and soapy iris cold-cream base, but with No 5's floral core replaced by the clean white smell of Tide laundry detergent. It works - if you're on the market for something very clean but a little posh, this could be a great fit, but I can't imagine buying this personally. Why bother with a watered-down No 5 with detergent instead of jasmine? One for the Chanel superfans - if you're the kind of collector who already has Beige and No 22 and all the different versions and variations of No 5, this is probably for you.