28 La Pausa

Les Exclusifs de Chanel began in 2007 as the house's private library: a set of fragrances sold mainly through Chanel's own boutiques and named for the places, people and objects that shaped the maison. 28 La Pausa borrowed its name from the villa Gabrielle Chanel had built in 1928 above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, its arches and stone staircase deliberately echoing the abbey at Aubazine where she was raised. Chanel prints no perfumer's name on the bottle. The composition is usually put down to Jacques Polge, who held the in-house chair between 1978 and 2015.

It is, at heart, an iris fragrance, and iris in perfumery is a strange, expensive material - cold, rooty, faintly of face powder and raw carrot rather than of any flower. Chanel's own copy describes a powdery floral of contrasts, with iris pallida lifted by pink peppercorn and vetiver. On skin that reads as a dry, silvery opening, a heart where the iris turns slightly suede-like and a rose shadow moves underneath, and a base that goes earthy and quietly animalic rather than sweet. There is a leather thread running through it that keeps the powder from turning polite.

One honest caveat: what you buy now is not the 2007 eau de toilette. Chanel has re-released the collection in eau de parfum and dropped the number, so the bottle reads simply La Pausa. The concentration is denser and a little warmer than the original, which some longtime wearers prefer and others quietly mourn.

This is not a crowd-pleaser and was never meant to be. It suits people who like their perfume close, cool and slightly severe - worn to a gallery, a long lunch, a winter's day in the Cape when the light is flat and grey and everything smells of wet stone. It works on any gender despite the feminine listing.

Performance is moderate by design. The eau de parfum lasts roughly six to eight hours on skin and projects modestly for the first hour before settling into a scent people notice at conversational distance rather than across a room. Iris compositions behave this way; if you want a trail that announces you, look elsewhere in the collection.