Yazhini ManimudiEveryone has at least one white shirt in their closet– bright, crisp, dependable, and effortlessly chic. Carolina Herrera’s Cedar Chic takes inspiration from this icon of fashion for a clean, woody fragrance that conveys the same variety of elegance.
Cedar Chic is part of the Confidential Collection that gave us 14 luxurious fragrances including Stallion Leather, Gold Incense, Emerald Musk and Sandal Ruby. The collection is said to be representative of the Herrera family’s treasured memories.
The white shirt, for Carolina Herrera’s mother, is a security blanket. The perfume is meant to embody the beauty and simplicity of the white shirt. The Givaudan perfumer Antoine Maisondieu translates this to olfactory terms– bergamot and aldehydes for the crisp freshness, three cedar woods, and clean musk.
The juice itself is a pearly white in the cylindrical faceted bottle typical of the collection. The light hits the glass beautifully, adding to the chic personality this unisex fragrance aims to exude. The bottle has a black cap, accented by a thin golden strip. The base is the same golden, the bottle altogether feeling like an outfit with a crisp white shirt, black slack, and golden jewelry.
Right at the first spritz, you get the sparkling freshness of bergamot combined with the fresh laundry-like scent that aldehydes bring. It announces itself immediately as something bright, refined and stylish. Exactly like a well ironed white shirt does. The bright excitement gradually mellows, the mild floral of aldehydes leading into the lightly sweet and fresh orange blossoms at the heart. The feeling of comfort and allure is brought by the combination of the soft cedarwood and musk.
It’s mostly fresh, but not without character. There’s a mild spicy accord from the cedarwood, sweetness from the orange blossom. It has a soft, inoffensive floral touch that allows the wearer to experience something intimately beautiful while in a professional setting.
It’s easy to see how this would be the white shirt of perfumes. At first, a white shirt is nothing revolutionary. It’s simple, standard, but not casual or easy to ignore like a white t-shirt. It exudes a kind of everyday sophistication, a garment that can very easily take your outfit to the next level. Cedar Chic is the same. It’s an everyday wear that doesn’t discriminate by gender. It can go with your casual outfits and when you get dressed up for work and looking to exude a quiet confidence.
Yazhini Manimudi
