KEIRA Knightley looks absolutely delicious in the new Coco Mademoiselle advertisement. She dons a body-hugging beige jumpsuit (specially designed by Karl Lagerfeld, no less), rides a Ducati and appears to be that close to giving herself to the most attractive man on the set during a photoshoot in Paris. Except that she spurns him just as he thinks he has her eating out of his hand.
The message is clear. No one owns the Coco Mademoiselle woman. She’s beautiful, independent and mischievous. She scorns at rules and norms, and dances to her own tune. If you managed to get that much from watching a 30-second clip, then director Joe Wright has succeeded in conveying that free spirit embodied by the scent that is Coco Mademoiselle.
(The advertisement is available in three versions: 3 mins 20 secs, 60 secs and 30 secs, but in Malaysia, only the 30-second clip will be aired next month over select Astro channels such as Starworld, Wah Lai Toi and Astro Prima.)
Which is no mean feat considering all he has is a muse that is Knightley to work with, to portray an emotion, an intangible sentiment, an expression of self.
Knightley, 25, reprises her role as the icon of Coco Mademoiselle this year, after making her first appearance as the muse for the scent in 2007. Best remembered for her appearance in the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy and Pride And Prejudice, this year she also appears in the new film by David Cronenberg, A Dangerous Method. She plays a young neurotic woman and mistress, healed by Sigmund Freud.
When she first replaced Kate Moss, the world sat up and took notice of the fresh-faced British actress who had just turned 21 then. “What makes Keira exceptional is that she shows strength and independence through the film roles she chooses to play. And she certainly has a vein of irreverence that is similar to Mademoiselle Chanel herself,” Christine Dagousset, the executive vice-president of fragrance and beauty had told Women’s Wear Daily in 2006.
The urban setting of the new advertisement has quite a different feel from the first ad, which had more feminine overtures, and featured evening gowns and softer romantic notions. The character and scent are decidedly quite different from Chanel’s classic No.5 or other Chanel fragrances. Knightley, deemed to personify the values of the fragrance, is seen portraying a grown up version of the character who’s now an independent, sexy, confident woman, yet still playful.
Conceived in 1984, Coco Mademoiselle is meant to combine all the contradictions that was Gabrielle Chanel. Obsessed with the pureness of white, she also loved barogue, gold and copper. She was a symbol of elegance, yet she pushed boundaries by dressing in men’s shirts and trousers. This is the woman who inspired perfumer Jacques Polge in 2001.
Twenty years after the creation of the fragrance, he replaced patchouli with a fractionated version. Today, the more polished version carries early notes of Sicilian orange, bergamot with a heart of jasmine and rose that descend on to a base of Indonesian patchouli, Haitian Vetier, bourbon vanilla and white musk. The freshness in the EDT is heightened by Sicilian grapefuit and lychee at the heart.
The whole idea was to reintroduce the fragrance to a new generation of women who might not be familiar with the Chanel heritage. Knightley confessed that Coco Mademoiselle is the first woman’s perfume that she’s ever worn as she usually wears men’s perfume.
“I suppose partly this has to do with strength you know you want to feel. I don’t like light and flowery, I’m not that kind of girl. I need something that’s gonna make me feel like I’m standing up straight,” she commented in a press release. She was introduced to the scent by a friend and she’s worn it ever since.
“It’s not overpowering or sweet. It’s just the right mixture of strength but also ... strength and subtlety at the same time. Possibly doesn’t make sense but for me that’s what it is. It just makes you feel like you can stand up straight. And I think that’s important. For me.”
The scene: It was Wright’s idea to begin with, to have her on a Ducati from the 1970s, reminiscent of the Crazy 88 gang immortalised by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
The motorcycles for Knightley and her co-riders were specially rented from collectors and made to appear on screen in a different colour from their original shade to harmonise with the fragrance.
(Obviously, they cannot be repainted so they were taken apart and certain elements replaced temporarily with pieces that were repainted. Then, the original parts were put back on the bikes after filming.)
Knightley had only several hours of bike riding lessons just before the shoot to learn how to control the machine. Organisation was crucial for the precise hours in which it was authorised to block circulation on the bridge leading from the Concorde to the Assemblee Nationale.
From an apartment in Place de la Concorde in Paris to the cobbled streets in the Marais neighbourhood, ending up in an imagined studio (before she rode off again), the entire shoot lasted a week.
Head designer Aline Bonetto dreamed up a photo studio like a mise en abyme, almost an exact copy of Coco Mademoiselle’s bedroom – a duplex in gold and champagne – with a stairway that seemed straight from Rue Cambon. Birdcages, mirrors and dresses from the last two collections as well as other decorative objects discovered at antique shops make up the carefully designed space.
This forms the main backdrop for the scene where a photographer (played by Argentine actor Alberto Amann) almost has his hands on Knightley before she flies the coop.
Again, this scene was also meticulously planned by Wright, who wanted an actor and not just any good-looking model to play the role. He wanted a focus on realism, and even the men and women who played extras had to have the same jobs as their characters. By doing this, Wright’s intention was to have every last gesture come off as anthentic.
“He (Wright) didn’t tell me exactly what inspired him to create the world of his film. But he did show me a very eclectic mix of photos and paintings, and had me listen to music (which he also played on the set during the shoot), which represented the Coco Mademoiselle character to him. Our shared language was built around these various elements and this really helped me get into the character and the film. Because, unlike a feature-length film, there isn’t any dialogue to rely on, as dialogue helps ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction,” Knightley added in the press release.
When asked what she liked about working with Wright, she said that “I like that everything is natural when I’m on a set with him.”This is their fifth outing together so they are already very familiar with each other’s working styles. “We really have a rare working relationship. We have a lot of fun on his sets, so much so that sometimes I feel remorseful: not everything should be this easy, this sweet, this funny and this warm.”
So, what’s the story behind the advertisement?
“The wonderful thing about these adverts that Chanel does for each of its perfumes, is that they should be a fantasy for the people who are watching them. And they should project whatever they want into the ads and the characters, because that’s what I think perfume is about. It’s about turning you into the person that you want to be. And I think that that’s what this kind of advertising and fantasy is about,” said Knightley.