THE CULT OF CHANEL
Grazia India|July 2024
More than 100 years since its creation, Annie Vischer discovers why the world still can't get enough of Chanel No5
Annie Vischer
THE CULT OF CHANEL

FRAGRANCE LORE states that in 1921 Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel – Coco to her friends – selected the fifth scent sample offered to her by Ernest Beaux, perfumer to the tsars and the French fashion designer’s ‘nose’. The sample would become Chanel No5: the fashion house’s very first perfume and, arguably, the world’s most iconic scent.

By 1921 Chanel was already a phenomenon in French fashion circles with designs that defied convention. She styled women in trousers and glamorised simplicity and comfort at a time when frilly dresses and restrictive corsets were the norm. It made sense, then, that Chanel’s first perfume should turn feminine ideals on their head too. The brief was simple: make a fragrance that smells like a woman. Which, in 1921, was a radical idea.

Before Chanel No5, the perfume world revolved around flowers in a very literal way – you could smell like lilies, roses, violets, take your pick… But smell like a woman? C’est pas possible. ‘No5 is a perfume with an abstract aesthetic,’ says Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer since 2015, ‘meaning it doesn’t seek to mimic the scents of nature.’ This was modern perfumery in the making. Leave it to Coco.

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