Fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was onto something when she, in 1921, coined Chanel No. 5 fragrance as the “scent of a modern woman.” Although the fragrance is slightly over 100 years old, you can walk into any luxury retailer and spot the square bottle or sniff the heady jasmine upon a quick spritz and become alive. The scent is iconic. Its composition of ylang-ylang, may rose and sandalwood creates a powdery, feminine celebration. But what has made the brand and the fragrance so victorious? What separates Chanel from other houses that tout themselves as having the best flowers in their fragrance compositions? To learn more, I traveled to Grasse, located on the north hills of Cannes, France to dive into the history of the brand and, more importantly, the jasmine flower, which is at the heart of Chanel No. 5.
“Gabrielle Chanel had this intuition that today seems to be obvious for all of us,” Olivier Polge, current in-house perfume creator told me while walking through the jasmine fields. “She felt she had to express her style or add to something through perfumes. So she met this perfumer who was living in this region and she asked him [to create] her first perfume. She asked him to use the most beautiful raw materials and he did.”
