Scent of a woman: the lingering legacy of Chanel's No. 5 perfume

Chanel No.5, the world’s best-selling fragrance, is 100 this year. Rachel Marie Walsh thinks it’s never looked better.

Actress Marilyn Monroe poses for a candid portrait with a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume on March 24, 1955 at the Ambassador Hotel in New York City, New York. (Photo by Ed Feingersh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

No. 5 is 100. That sentence does not make sense but neither, before Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, did a single perfume enticing the world for a century. Chanel No.5 is still the world’s best-selling and most famous fragrance. There are many beautiful items we associate with Chanel, all of which have been called wardrobe essentials over the years. 

There is the little black dress, the tweed jacket, the cardigan-jacket suit and the quilted 2.55 handbag. A straw boater, pearls and pumps are all part of the Chanel look. We admire them and buy copies of them but few of us own the real things. Millions of women own no.5 and if you could see a smell—as Frédéric Malle, the famous perfume editor and nephew of ex no.5 ambassador Candice Bergen claims to do — it would look like a female friend or family member.