Chanel Launches Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu at NYFW — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Chanel hosted the launch of Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu at Balthazar in SoHo on Thursday night during New York Fashion Week, with indie band Balu Brigada providing a live set that later gave way to a DJ.
- Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast, in the final days of her pregnancy ("I'm ready to pop!"), carried her late mother's decades-old black quilted Chanel bag, telling Variety it "meant so much to her" — making the carry feel "really meaningful."
- Sarah Sherman recalled her mother's go-to scent was the original Coco Mademoiselle, and described the newest iteration in one word: "Girl." She also volunteered, "I'm a Patchouli girl!"
- Paige DeSorbo showed off a new metallic lambskin Chanel handbag she spotted at the Venice Film Festival, saying: "I walked by Chanel and this was in the window, and I said, 'No one can have this but me!'"
- Guests dined on floating trays of cheeseburgers, salmon crudo, shrimp cocktail, fries, white wine, and champagne, followed by pavlova, chocolate mousse, and mini profiteroles — with croissants and éclairs from Balthazar's boulangerie packed to go.
- Surprise guest Adam Friedland showed up without an interlocking-C accessory and deadpanned: "They just told me to come here. I don't know what I'm doing. What is this event? I thought it was a runway."
- Downstairs, the restaurant was converted into photo ops, including a deep-maroon couch beneath Chanel signage, a backlit alcove with a vintage rotary phone, and a mirror-wrapped bathroom stocked with Chanel beauty products.
Why it matters: For Chanel, staging the Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu debut as an intimate NYFW dinner at Balthazar — rather than a splashy runway — extends the franchise's cultural reach through celebrity and indie-music adjacency, while guest anecdotes about mothers' original Coco bottles reinforce the heritage positioning the house is selling.
Ask SkimNews
