BLEU DE CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF: In Conversation With Sylvie Legastelois

Dig­i­tal Fash­ion & Beau­ty Edi­tor Eve Fitz­patrick

With the launch of BLEU DE CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF, CHANEL reveals not only a bold new fra­grance but also a bot­tle designed to mir­ror its inten­si­ty. In this exclu­sive inter­view, Sylvie Legastelois, Direc­tor of Pack­ag­ing Cre­ation and Graph­ic Iden­ti­ty at CHANEL Parfums/Beauté, shares how she worked along­side per­fumer Olivi­er Polge to cap­ture the spir­it of blue, the pow­er of con­cen­tra­tion, and the time­less ele­gance of CHANEL in a strik­ing new design.

The debut of BLEU DE CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF is accom­pa­nied by a new bot­tle. How did you
work with Olivi­er Polge to bring it to life?

Olivi­er was deeply inspired by this project. And that’s impor­tant! With­out inspi­ra­tion,
there is no fra­grance. He approached BLEU DE CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF like a women’s
per­fume extract — with the same inten­si­ty. That’s unheard of for men’s fra­grances. It
aligned per­fect­ly with the spir­i­tu­al pow­er of the colour blue. He went beyond what he
had done for the orig­i­nal per­fume. It’s an inspir­ing crescen­do. The scale of the chal­lenge
Olivi­er set for him­self real­ly chart­ed the path for me. I told myself the bot­tle had to reflect
the poten­cy of this extract. We need­ed a spe­cif­ic bot­tle with a very strong shape and
iden­ti­ty that would offer a clear visu­al expres­sion of the fragrance’s con­cen­tra­tion, since
the name alone wouldn’t sug­gest it.

How would you describe this bottle?

The first com­par­i­son that comes to mind is an inkwell. And I real­ly like that idea. The
con­cen­tra­tion of ink evokes the notion of inten­si­ty as well as the spir­i­tu­al res­o­nance of
the words writ­ten with that ink. This image came about while sketch­ing and design­ing the
bot­tle, dur­ing my dis­cus­sions with Olivi­er Polge.

This new fra­grance is a com­plex com­po­si­tion, much like an extract. The over­all impres­sion
is rad­i­cal and intense. How do you trans­late that inten­si­ty into design?

I trans­lat­ed this sense of inten­si­ty through the idea of con­cen­tra­tion. I want­ed the design to
be intrigu­ing — for some­one to ini­tial­ly think it’s the same bot­tle as before, and then realise,
upon clos­er obser­va­tion, that every­thing is dif­fer­ent. I like when things aren’t imme­di­ate­ly
obvi­ous, when every­thing doesn’t reveal itself at once. When try­ing to den­si­fy or inten­si­fy
a form, you have to cre­ate a strong struc­ture with­out let­ting the shape become heavy or
over­whelm­ing. It’s quite tricky to pre­serve the airy strength of a design — its ele­va­tion. You
have to pay close atten­tion to the bevels, the columns, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the glass, and the
base of the bot­tle, which we call the “mar­loquette”.
I believe that for BLEU DE CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF, form reflects for­mu­la, reveal­ing on the
out­side the extra­or­di­nary inten­si­ty held within.

What does the colour blue rep­re­sent to you and to CHANEL?

Blue is a spir­i­tu­al colour. It has an inde­fin­able qual­i­ty. Is it blue? Is it black? “Too black to
be blue, too blue to be black…” I love that ver­sa­til­i­ty. Also, you can see in the archives that
Gabrielle Chanel liked to mix navy blue and black. She appre­ci­at­ed that mys­te­ri­ous qual­i­ty.
In the 1930s, she cre­at­ed Bleu de CHANEL, just like Beige de CHANEL and Rouge de
CHANEL. So this colour is ful­ly legit­i­mate. It’s part of our heritage.

The his­to­ry of the colour blue is exten­sive. Which of its shades are evoked by BLEU DE
CHANEL L’EXCLUSIF?

When I say that blue is a spir­i­tu­al colour, I mean a colour with­out bound­aries. It is nat­u­ral­ly
intense; it evokes the depths of the sea as well as the vast­ness of the sky. It is ori­en­tat­ed
towards the future. If red rep­re­sents action, blue speaks more to pro­jec­tion. This colour
reflects Gabrielle Chanel’s desire “to be part of what is going to happen”.

On the spec­trum of blue, where does the bot­tle sit? Some­where between Klein and
Soulages?

Klein’s blue is full of ener­gy and vital­i­ty. It’s some­thing beyond a colour. It’s a dimen­sion unto
itself. This Bleu de CHANEL is clos­er to the blues of Soulages. Soulages is known for his
“out­renoir”, but he also cre­at­ed blues of extra­or­di­nary inten­si­ty — deep and moving.

Is it a craft quite close to archi­tec­ture? Would you say archi­tec­ture is a source of inspi­ra­tion
for you?

Yes, I real­ly admire Le Corbusier’s work, and I’m gen­er­al­ly inspired by his mas­ter­ful sense of
vol­ume. In this case, though, I would think more of the work of Tadao AndŌ, whom I admire
great­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly some of the hous­es he built in Japan — his way of com­pos­ing with box­es,
mak­ing vol­umes and mate­ri­als inter­act, and play­ing with the rela­tion­ship between inte­ri­or
and exte­ri­or.

How would you describe this fra­grance in three words?

Con­cen­trat­ed, intense, sophisticated.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Andrew Kim­ber
Art Direc­tor Eve Fitz­patrick