The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
CH Under The Sea draws its name from an underwater fantasy, the ocean as a place of transformation, mystery, and warmth. Created by Violaine Collas and launched in 2021, this limited edition takes the mermaid myth literally: saltwater giving way to sun-warmed skin, coconut milk, and vanilla. The fragrance translates the idea of diving beneath the surface and finding something unexpectedly warm waiting there. It's marine not as cold or sharp, but as the embrace of warm shallows where everything tropical and skin-like converges. The name is a promise: whatever you imagined when you heard it, this is what it smells like to keep that promise.
What makes this structure unusual is the seaweed. In most women's fragrances, marine notes stay cold, ozonic, clean, a concept of water rather than the thing itself. Here, seaweed anchors the coconut and vanilla, keeps the sweetness from going full gourmand. It adds a mineral depth that makes the tropical notes feel less like a piña colada and more like something that grew in salt water. The ylang-ylang functions as a bridge: floral enough to keep it feminine, tropical enough to belong in the water. Pink grapefruit opens bright but not sharp, there's an inherent softness in the composition that keeps it from ever feeling like a cleaning product.
The evolution
The opening arrives like surf: pink grapefruit bright and immediate, softened by seaweed so it doesn't hit sharp, instead it's mineral-fresh, almost sunlit. The rose appears quickly, watery and delicate. Within minutes, coconut and ylang-ylang take over. The tropical warmth overtakes the marine, and you realize this isn't a cold-water fragrance at all. The hand-off is smooth, no awkward middle passage. The seaweed doesn't disappear, it lingers underneath, keeping the vanilla honest, preventing it from going full dessert. Six hours in, vanilla and sandalwood have settled close to the skin. The coconut has dried down to something more like coconut water than coconut milk. Eight to ten hours later, there's still a warm, slightly salty trace, the memory of something that was there, now part of your skin.
Cultural impact
CH Under The Sea arrived in 2021 as Carolina Herrera's boldest limited-edition experiment, releasing during a period when the brand's core CH line faced declining interest among younger consumers. The underwater-fantasy concept broke from conventional marine fragrances by refusing aquatic-note clichés and leaning into tropical warmth instead. Its success prompted the brand to expand limited-edition experimentation, with subsequent releases testing more daring concepts. The fragrance attracted a dedicated collector community that drove secondary market prices above retail within months of release, demonstrating unexpected demand for a brand not traditionally associated with niche perfumery.
