English translation below.

Seize The Chance
“I believe there is more than just one opportunity in life. You will have many opportunities throughout your life—the key is to seize them and act on them as much as possible. In the view of Angèle, the new face of Chanel Chance Eau Splendide, opportunities can be created, and luck can be grasped.”

A snip, a shock, a seismic shift. So often, a woman’s defining new era begins with the fall of a tress, a strategic severing. Angèle's recent metamorphosis offers a counterpoint to Coco Chanel's timeless maxim, 'A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.' The face of Chanel's new Chance Eau Splendide fragrance, the Belgian singer-songwriter, reveals how a self-described "disaster" haircut became the catalyst for a resonant new chapter.

September 2023, the month the scissors fell, followed the world tour of her critically-acclaimed, second album, Nonante-Cinq, (ninety-five) first released on her 26th birthday in 2021. It came after the success of her first album, major collaborations with the likes of Dua Lipa and a 2021 Netflix documentary, Angèle. In the afterglow of 2023’s marathon of live shows (including two Coachella appearances), Angèle sought out a return to anonymity, and intimacy - the impetus for her transformation.

“I thought it was going to be the new me, a new era of my life and it was actually a disaster because I cut it way too short,” she smiles, remembering the transition from her former long, blonde hair to a brown pixie cut. “It was a very interesting experience, more than I ever thought it would be, because I realised how much I was missing a very deep self-confidence when I was not on stage. When I was not the big superstar with long blond hair, I felt very weak.”

Settled on a blush-coloured Louis XV chair, in a grand, sunlit suite in Paris’ Ritz hotel, Angèle appears anything but fragile. Her hair has grown out, fashioned into a very striking, very French fringed bob, returned to its former golden hue. In person, her eye contact is unwavering and warm, her silken singing tones are flecked with a distinct sensuality when she speaks. She wears an open gingham top tied with a silk bow at her neck, worn over a white t-shirt , blue jeans and a pair of classic Chanel two-tone slingbacks in black and ivory, next to which her beloved Pepete, a five year old petit brabaçon, (a twice coverstar who has been known to don a Chanel necklace) fidgets. She greets the crew-filled room politely in English and French. And even as she describes moments of uncertainty, she speaks with the self-possession of a woman in complete alignment with herself.

Angèle was born Angèle Joséphine Aimée van Laeken in Uccle, Belgium. Her father, Marka, is a celebrated singer, her mother, Laurence Bibot, is a comedian and actress, and her brother is rapper Roméo Elvis, (with whom she frequently collaborates). Theirs was a home perpetually perfumed in music. Showing an early aptitude for the craft, Angèle began learning classical piano from the age of five to the age of 19, attending the Jazz Studio Antwerp for two years. Despite some scattered lessons and gentle insistence from her father, Angèle didn’t particularly wish to sing, instead playing keyboard on her father’s tour, learning how to play in front of an audience, navigate technical issues, and observe the politics of playing at a venue. It was not until she began singing on Instagram, where she would post short clips of herself singing and playing the piano - often with a humorous or self-deprecating twist - that her own fan base began to grow.

“At the start, you don’t know what you’re getting into, and that makes for pure spontaneity,” Angèle describes of her nascent days in the industry. “When I was 20, I was so carefree, I wasn’t aware of what was at stake. That’s precisely the beautiful and precious thing about starting out: you follow your instincts with an unawareness of what lies ahead, this ability to jump in without necessarily realising or anticipating what might happen.”

At the age of 20, a chance encounter with a family friend challenged her to take her music further. She went home, installed some music production software - some of which she still uses today - and wrote her first songs. Then came the release of her first album in 2018, Brol, (Belgian slang for ‘trash’). Quickly, the soft, unassuming femininity of her voice, pitched against her sometimes optimistic, sometimes melancholic, sometimes tongue-in-cheek lyrics, saw her go seven times platinum in her home country. Her second album, Nonante-Cinq, went triple-platinum in France. Between the two, Grammy award-winning artist Dua Lipa invited her to collaborate on 2020’s Fever, a sultry pop track, where Lipa's English vocals intertwined with Angèle's French. Of the experience, Angèle gushes. “She was an incredible artist to [work] with so early in my career, being able to sing with her and see the way she works was a big chance.”

So pure is the timbre of her voice, that she dubs french versions of animated films such as Toy Story, Asterix & Obelisk, and Space Jam. Her CV has extended to acting, when she played opposite Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver in 2021’s Annette and a cameo on French comedy series La Flamme. 2024 saw Angèle take to the world stage for the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympic games, when she performed with French musical icons Phoenix and Kavinsky after which, their track, a reimagining of Kavinsky’s 2010 sleeper hit, Nightfall, remained at the top of the international music charts for several months.

Angèle’s ambassadorship with Chanel began five years ago, when she appeared alongside Margaret Qualley and Pharrell Williams in the Spring Summer 2020 eyewear campaign, going on to appear in Coco Beach and Chanel make-up campaigns. The French house’s ateliers collaborated with the singer on her Nonante-Cinq tour looks, a tribute to Karl Lagerfeld’s Spring Summer 1995 collection, the same year of her birth. 

As the face of Chance Eau Splendide, Angèle also composed the campaign track, entitled ‘A Little More’. Though under strict embargo at the time of our interview, the singer’s enthusiasm for the project is palpable. “I’m very happy to have been able to compose the campaign song,” she effervesces. “ At the time I was working on it, I had just finished a world tour. I was in New York listening to Abba, The Supremes and Chicago over and over again. I drew a lot of inspiration from that sixties and seventies vibe, and from disco sounds too, to evoke the joy, the playfulness and the nostalgia in this track.”

The perfume itself is an olfactory expression of a carefree, optimistic state of mind. For Olivier Polge, Chanel in-house perfumer, there are three words that describe his latest iteration: joy, colour, and spontaneity. The Chance fragrance family is connected by a certain luminosity - bright and colourful notes, and floral styles that possess a lively sillage. “Chance Eau Splendide is a fragrance of optimism. It shines on the skin while expressing complex, surprising facets,” describes Polge. “For this new interpretation, I wanted to construct [Chanel Chance’s] characteristic freshness with something innovative, an uncharted accord.” Polge meditated on a red fruit and a raspberry accord, with the addition of a rose geranium facet from the Maison’s own flower fields in Grasse, France, that renders the composition fruity and fresh, without being clawingly sweet.

For Angèle, perfume is a medium of momentum, of strength. “When I wear perfume, I instinctively set myself in motion,” she explains. “My perfume is the final touch before I leave the house and open myself up to the world, to other people. It gives me confidence. After getting dressed and putting on my make-up, I put on my perfume and I feel complete.” Beyond movement, Angèle finds scent deeply personal, tied to vivid memories and feelings. Like hearing, smells instantly transport her, recalling specific moments and emotions – like the warmth of Sunday mornings at her grandparents', filled with toast, hot chocolate, and classical music.

And what does Angèle think about the idea of ‘chance’? 

“I took many,” she says. “What I think is that there is not only one chance. I think you will always have many chances throughout your life, your journey. It’s just about taking it, and acting on it as much as you can.”