Genie in a bottle
The legendary French perfume, which celebrates its 90th birthday next month, remains an olfactory symbol of ‘the good life’ with a bottle reportedly selling every 30 seconds. In retail terms, that translates as $100 million a year, rendering it the top-selling fragrance of all time. Whether its creator, designer Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel envisaged such iconic status for her eponymous brand is a mystery, much like the heady top notes which have come to define No 5. That being said, its unilateral sway over generations of women is unique. So just what is it that makes a petite square flacon so utterly irresistible?
Call it a mood, numerology or just good timing but Coco Chanel’s No 5 debut was a first in a myriad of ways. Much like her boyish aesthetic liberated in designs such as the bouclé cardigan and little black dress, Chanel felt it was time to capture the free spirit of the 1920s in a bottle. At a time when fragrance adhered to the polarities of ‘respectable’ garden flowers and provocative ‘demi-monde’ musk, Mademoiselle Coco’s endeavour to reconcile such opposites resulted in one truly evocative signature scent with the help of master perfumer Ernest Beaux.
