Platinum Égoïste

Chanel writes it PLATINUM EGOISTE. The reversed form you see on most retail sites is a habit rather than the house's name for it. It appeared in 1993, three years after Egoiste, the darker and more argumentative fragrance it was built to answer. Where Egoiste was a dark, spicy sandalwood-and-rose statement that divided people, Platinum went the other way entirely: cold, green, metallic and clean. It became the far bigger seller.

Chanel describes it as a fresh, aromatic and distinctly modern scent for the extrovert who makes himself known, built on what the house calls a fougere-green accord. On skin it opens with a bracing hit of lavender and rosemary, genuinely herbal, almost like a crushed handful from a garden, lifted by petitgrain from Paraguay and neroli. Galbanum brings a bitter green sap note that is the fragrance's most distinctive feature and the thing that dates it, in a good way, to the early nineties. Clary sage and geranium hold the middle, and then it dries into oakmoss, vetiver, cedar, sandalwood and a soft amber. The overall effect is clean, sharp and slightly austere, a shaved-and-pressed scent rather than a seductive one.

That makes it an unusually good hot-weather fragrance. It suits a Highveld summer morning and an office where you would rather not be the person people can smell. It has been a work fragrance for three decades and it still is.

You should know it is not the perfume it was in 1993. Oakmoss, which formed a structural part of the original base, has been progressively restricted across the industry since the mid-nineties for allergen reasons, and Platinum Egoiste has been reformulated accordingly. Current bottles are drier, cleaner and lighter than vintage ones, with less mossy depth in the dry-down. They are still very good; they are simply not identical, and anyone telling you otherwise has not smelled both. Expect five to seven hours from a modern bottle with moderate projection in the first hour. Chanel still supports the line properly, selling an after shave lotion and deodorants alongside the eau de toilette.