CHANCE ENCOUNTERS: As part of the ongoing celebration of its Chance Eau Splendide’s launch on April 15, Chanel held an intimate gathering Thursday evening in Paris’ Soho House to air the video “Taking A Chance in Music.” 

Singers Solange Knowles, Neneh Cherry, Yukimi and Angèle, who is ambassador of Eau Splendide, discussed subjects such as chance and jazz in a clip to be shown on media platforms and YouTube.

“It was clear from Day One that working with Chanel, they wanted to go on a musical odyssey, which is what we’ve done,” said Dave Holt, publisher and chief creative officer of Wax Poetics, which made the video with the French luxury house. “They wanted to illustrate how creative lives have to take a chance.”

The shooting of the roundtable discussion took place on a bitter day in Paris. (The proceedings were also captured in a mini Wax Poetics magazine.)

“I’ve always found connection with the idea of waiting for a sign and understanding why things happen they way they do,” said Angèle, in the spot’s opening, which also has toggling images of Paris. “There’s something about stepping out of your comfort zone, the feeling of not knowing what will happen, but trusting that it will lead you to something.

“Paris has always been a place of hidden gems, with stories waiting to unfold, a place where art and creativity is constantly in the air,” she continued.

Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer-creator, likened music and perfume. “Somehow, it expresses something intimate, as well,” he said. “There is something that translates from you. We are very poor in words, when you speak about perfume. There are none that really expresses the reality of it. We use a lot of words from music: We speak about notes, about accords — I think you could even speak about the tonality of a perfume. There is something that we cannot express, and I like that.”

Knowles shared about being courageous when she recorded her first record at age 14. “Sonically I listen back to it, and it’s much more experimental and adventurous as I think it was packaged to be,” she said. “There was some brave moments there. I also feel like as a teenager, you’re writing from such a raw and honest place that I feel like lyrically I still haven’t upped a lot of things that I said. There’s poetry in everything I said.”

“Music’s a very powerful medium,” continued Cherry. “I had a little radio on in the hotel room that was set on a jazz station for effect as you walk in the room. I just left it there and a Dinah Washington song came on. I love her so much — I was just lying there, kind of bleeding a little bit from my heart. Just feeling and thinking, I guess leading to this conversation we’re going to have [about] the language of music… the feelings that music and sound evokes. It’s beyond language.”

Knowles said: “It carries smell, it carries sight.” She called it “such an incredible gift and tool that we have to be transporters of time and space in that way.”

Taking a chance for Yukimi is “leaning into life. What I think of is having your eyes closed and jumping back and waiting for something to catch you.”

She added it’s about “having some kind of a faith in that something will catch you, and that there is some kind of a plan there.”

Chanel didn’t stop there with its global rollout of the Chance Eau Splendide. 

It made sure to take its new fragrance to the streets of Shoreditch in east London. The brand painted a small vicinity in the fragrance’s lilac shade from Shoreditch House all the way to Chance Street, where a pop-up will take place from Friday to May 5.

The pop-up space has been painted in a Pop Art-inspired mural with the fragrance bottle and the slogan “Take your chance!”

Inside there were nods to Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s superstition with a small box that mimicked the cap of the fragrance, which is based on a dice with each side opening up to a mystical message such as “Chance is a remarkable twist of fate.”

Other rooms included fun games, such as an ATM-like machine that printed small swatches of the fragrance onto a sample card; a lottery machine that contained prizes such as a poster, mirror or samples; a labyrinth table game and a bar that lets visitors smell all the other iterations of Chance, from Chance Eau Fraîche, Chance Eau Tendre to Chance Eau Vive.

The pop-up ends with a small store allowing visitors to purchase Chance Eau Splendide and to also get a taste of a complimentary candy floss inspired by the purple hue of the fragrance. The pop-up will also be offering fragrance and beauty consultations on site including Chance-inspired makeup looks.

On May 1, visitors can book in for a Chance Street soirée with a live DJ, cocktails and canapés.