Misia
Eau de Parfum, Chanel (2016)

Smells exactly like vintage lipstick to me. Not for me, but maybe for you if you like that scent. It just reminds me of the smell of several of my elementary teachers in the 70s, applying their expensive lipstick after lunch, eyeing which of us deserved a good paddling to rid them of their frustrations.

The EDP:

I recently read a post somewhere online where the writer described how much he misses the freshly-lit-cigarette smell of his childhood because it always meant that an adult was somewhere nearby.

Perfumes like Misia have that same kind of vibe to me. With their lipstick/makeup/handbag interior accords, they signal a time before today's prolonged adolescence, when everyone over about the age of 21 was considered an adult, expected to do adult things. My parents were 25 years old when they married, decidedly working-class, yet photos of them back in the late 1960s show my father teaching high school wearing a suit and tie, my mother volunteering at the local library in a tweed suit and heels. And they always smelled great—mom of Madame Rochas and handbag leather, my father of aftershave and wool overcoat. And when they went out, they'd trail back home whiffs of booze and cigarettes, projecting to my little kid brain the idea that the adult world was definitely someplace worth growing up into.

Misia is not a perfume that smells like those of that time, but, rather, one that smells of the time in which they were made. It is tender and romantic, but with a tough, pragmatic edge. I get a heavy, carroty iris right off the bat, made even more technicolor by a burst of aldehydes. Later, as the violets, rose, and carnation take over, Misia enters a romantic, slightly wistful, phase, and tendrils of this floral trio remain even into the dry down, which starts off as sweetly medicinal before shifting into a heavier phase marked by sandalwood and suede.

It does remind me a bit of Lipstick Rose, which I also love, but of the two Misia is the much more focused and complex composition—and it has that distinctive Chanel elegance and lift (in that way, it also reminds me a lot of No. 22). I struggle to fully nail Lipstick Rose down—it has a cheery fuzziness to it, as if its notes and accords were filtered through some kind of neon-colored veil. Misia on the other hand clearly broadcasts exactly what it's about but isn't at all linear or pedantic. It wears its heart confidently on its sleeve without ever sinking into sentimentality.