A Dazzling Tribute

To mark its 100th anniversary, the legendary Chanel no. 5 fragrance takes on a new form as the inspiration for a brilliant high jewellery collection

- Renee Batchelor

Everyone has a first memory of Chanel No. 5. Whether it was watching one of its iconic advertisements that featured celebrated beauties like Catherine Deneuve and Nicole Kidman or catching a whiff of the distinctive scent on a particularly elegant woman, the iconic perfume has sealed its place as one of the most memorable in history. In 2021, the 100th anniversary of its creation, the house pays tribute to the scent in a most unusual way — by creating a 123-piece high jewellery range called Collection No. 5, a range dedicated to the perfume in all its iterations.

While the house of Chanel has created unusual high jewellery collections in the past, including its recent tribute to the material tweed as well as the Chanel Les Blés collection that referenced wheat (a personal talisman of Coco Chanel), this is the first time that the perfume itself is serving as direct inspiration.

Patrice Leguéreau, director of the Chanel fine jewellery creation studio says, “I realised how rich the patrimony and the culture of Chanel was. To pay tribute to No. 5 was something that I could imagine. I was fascinated by the richness of the ingredients of No. 5. And when I joined Chanel, I understood our richness was in the material, the ingredients and the story behind the perfume. My work in Chanel is to be able to turn all the richness of Chanel into jewellery, and No. 5 was part of the subject that I wanted to develop and create. ”

In the collection, the showstopper of which is the 55.55 necklace, different elements of the fragrance are celebrated — from the angular lines of the bottle to the ingredients in the fragrance. Leguéreau’s studio in particular looked at five key elements: the stopper, the bottle, the number 5, the flowers and the sillage.