Cristalle Eau Verte

Cristalle is one of the quieter landmarks in the Chanel catalogue. It dates from 1974 and is commonly attributed to Henri Robert, the house's in-house perfumer from 1958 to 1978, though no name is printed. It belongs to the sharp, dry, lemon-and-hyacinth school of French perfumery that fell out of fashion and has never quite come back. Eau Verte, added in 2009 under Jacques Polge, is the version that translated that austerity into something wearable in the twenty-first century.

Chanel's current copy for it is unusually poetic and unusually specific: a breath of nature and rays of crystalline light, a floral fresh green fragrance blossoming with a delicate magnolia accord, with magnolia rendered transparent by citrus, jasmine and neroli accents. That magnolia is the reason it works. Where the original Cristalle is all bright acid and green stem, Eau Verte places a creamy, lemony white flower at its centre, which rounds the sharpness without making it sweet. The opening is Amalfi lemon and bergamot, clean and almost carbonated. Neroli and magnolia fill the middle. Jasmine, a thread of iris and a light musk carry the last hours, and the whole thing stays translucent from first spray to last.

This is a daylight fragrance and, more specifically, a hot-weather one. It is the sort of scent that reads as showered rather than perfumed, which makes it useful on a Highveld December morning or anywhere the air is doing half the work already. It flatters skin at close range and it is entirely unobjectionable in an office, a car or a queue.

Two things to know. First, longevity is modest by design. Citrus and green materials are volatile, and four to six hours is a realistic expectation, with the last stretch sitting close to the skin. Second, the strength has moved. Eau Verte began as an eau de toilette concentree and the current bottle is an eau de parfum, a denser reading than the 2009 original, so older reviews describe a lighter thing than the one you will receive. That change works in its favour, but it does mean you should not assume you know it from memory.