No5 - 100 Years of Celebrity
The Cheshire Magazine talks to Olivier Polge, In-House Perfumer-Creator at CHANEL to look back on 100 years of the brand and its relationship with celebrity
In 1921, Nยฐ5 came into the world. It was the first fragrance created by visionary fashion designer Gabrielle Chanel, who was also the first designer to launch a fragrance under her own name. Her intention was to liberate femininity from its olfactory constraints in the same way that she used her creations to free minds and assert a new style. During this era, the fragrances on the market generally limited women to the scent of a single flower, such as lily of the valley, violet, or jasmine. Breaking with the traditions of its time, the abstract scent trail of Nยฐ5 is a reflection of Gabrielle Chanelโs personality. Her mirror image, in fragrance form.
With Nยฐ5, Ernest Beaux designed an avant-garde composition, combining the finest natural ingredients with synthetic molecules called aldehydes, which were still new at the time, in unprecedented proportions to exalt the notes of the fragrance. Nยฐ5 eludes comparison to other fragrances and does not conform to any rules. Thanks to its radical character, it became the tipping point that ushered in the modern era of perfume and changed its history. Nยฐ5 is a pioneering fragrance, a revolution.
PRESERVING Nยฐ5, FROM ONE PERFUMER TO THE NEXT...
The three perfumers who succeeded Ernest Beaux all inherited a common duty: to protect the Houseโs iconic fragrance. Like a torch, the secret formula of Nยฐ5 has been passed down to Henri Robert, Jacques Polge and now Olivier Polge. โPreserving Nยฐ5 requires my constant attention,โ attests Olivier Polge, In-House Perfumer-Creator since 2015. It is his responsibility to oversee the sourcing of the raw materials that go into the iconic fragrance and ensure that their quality is maintained. His year is thus organized around the harvest calendar of the ingredients used to compose Nยฐ5, among which include jasmine and May rose from Grasse. From the harvest to the extraction methods, Olivier Polge carries out each step of this painstaking process, which forms an integral part of his daily work, in partnership with CHANELโs Laboratory of Fragrance Creation and Development. This ensures that the production of Nยฐ5 remains exceptional year after year.
... AND REINVENTING IT
Since its creation in 1921, Nยฐ5 has been to CHANEL what grammar is to language, determining the style of all other CHANEL fragrances. A manifesto that declares the absolute freedom of both creator and creation, which remains the driving force and the soul of the House.
Nยฐ5 is thus an endless source of inspiration. With the exception of Henri Robert, the Houseโs successive perfumers have each brought one of the numerous facets of Nยฐ5 to light through various reinterpretations, an exercise in style. Today, there exist five different interpretations, including the original Parfum.
Nยฐ5 PARFUM (1921)
Composed in 1921, the Parfum is the most precious of the interpretations. โThe starting point was a very rich floral fragrance, which was completely novel at the time,โ Olivier Polge shares. Knowing that Gabrielle Chanel wanted her fragrance to be โinimitableโ, perfumer Ernest Beaux incorporated the most luxurious ingredients at his disposal into the formula: flowers grown in Grasse. Its composition, of the utmost opulence, contrasts radically with the minimalist design of the bottle. The powerful scent trail of Nยฐ5 Parfum represented a clean break from the single-note fragrances that were prevalent during this era: its intense floral bouquet contains a particular blend of May rose and jasmine from Grasse. Its formula, which is also characterised by the unprecedented use of aldehydes, propelled perfumery into the modern era. As CHANELโs dรฉbut fragrance, Nยฐ5 Parfum defined the Houseโs olfactive style and set the standard for its tradition of excellence and expertise in perfumery, from flower to bottle.
Nยฐ5 EAU DE TOILETTE (1924)
Three years after composing the Parfum, Ernest Beaux created the first variation of Nยฐ5. โThe highly precious nature of the Parfum quickly justified the need for a lighter eau de toilette version that stayed true to the spirit of the original,โ explains Olivier Polge. Woodier than the original fragrance, the eau de toilette is distinguished by its dry, lively nuances of vetiver, which are offset by the deep scent of sandalwood. These two woody notes support the floral bouquet of jasmine, rose and ylang-ylang and are enhanced by the notorious aldehydes that are unique to Nยฐ5. The Eau de Toilette also leaves behind a scent trail that is less heady than that of the Parfum. As the first reinterpretation of the original fragrance composition, it introduced a new way to experience fragrance, in a spray that allowed for a generous, wide-sweeping application.
Nยฐ5 EAU DE PARFUM (1986)
Observing how fragrance trends were evolving, Jacques Polge created a third interpretation of Nยฐ5 in 1986. The Eau de Parfum offered a new concentration that revived the sensuality of Ernest Beauxโs original fragrance while also keeping up with the times. โHis intention was to preserve as much of the Parfumโs richness as possible, both from an olfactory perspective and in terms of the fragranceโs amber colour,โ explains Olivier Polge. In this composition, the floral-aldehydic bouquet is lavish and opulent, with a rich quality that extends to its dense, enveloping and long-lasting scent trail. A note of vanilla lends the fragrance its distinct oriental signature.
Nยฐ5 EAU PREMIรRE (2008)
In 2008, Jacques Polge released a fourth version of Nยฐ5, one that was airy and luminous. The perfumer tried to imagine how Nยฐ5 would have smelled if Ernest Beaux had had access to a range of contemporary raw materials at the time of its creation. To reinterpret the signature of the original fragrance, he used white musks, which were omnipresent in the fragrances of the 2000s, as well as aldehydes developed by CHANEL from citrus essences. Products of modern technology, these aldehydes envelop the iconic floral bouquet of rose, jasmine and ylang-ylang. Enlivened with a touch of vanilla, โthe scent trail of the Eau Premiรจre reveals another texture, closer to the skin, that remains very similar to Nยฐ5,โ Olivier Polge reflects.
Nยฐ5 LโEAU (2016)
In 2016, Olivier Polge created a new variation, guided by a desire for freshness. โI wanted to play with the limits of its identity,โ the perfumer reveals. โTake the image that Nยฐ5 conveys and turn it on its head, make it more fluid. More transparent, in the best sense of the word.โ To this end, he based his composition around cedarwood, which underscores a textured scent trail that is less enveloping than the other interpretations. A fresh, floral eau de toilette, Nยฐ5 LโEAU opens with a citrus accord โ lemon, mandarin and orange โ that the aldehydes elevate to its highest potential. Rose and jasmine meld with a new, fractionated note of ylang-ylang. Nยฐ5 LโEAU is perhaps the variation that differs most from the others. However, the notes used by Olivier Polge are the same. This illustrates the idea that in perfumery, everything is a matter of proportion, just as every melody ever created was formed from a mere 12 musical notes.
AN ICON OF FEMININITY
In 1937, at the height of her notoriety, Gabrielle Chanel became the first woman to be the face of her own fragrance, Nยฐ5. Leaning up against a fireplace in a suite at the Ritz, she posed in front of Franรงois Kollarโs camera for an advertisement that appeared in Harperโs Bazaar.
In 1952, Marilyn Monroe revealed that she wore nothing but โa few drops of Nยฐ5โ to bed. This confession, which she later discussed in a 1960 interview for Marie Claire, consecrated the legend. Nยฐ5 has since established itself as an absolute icon.
In the 1960s, Jacques Helleu, Artistic Director for CHANEL Fragrances up until 2007, initiated the era of brand ambassadors. He chose some of the most gorgeous women in the world and called upon the biggest names in photography and film to capture their beauty for advertising campaigns that would go down in history.
Throughout the decades, Nยฐ5 has been represented by some of the greatest actresses of their time, including Ali MacGraw, Lauren Hutton, Catherine Deneuve, Carole Bouquet and Nicole Kidman. One by one, they posed for famous photographers such as Richard Avedon, Patrick Demarchelier, and Dominique Issermann, and filmed under the guidance of renowned directors like Helmut Newton, Ridley Scott and Baz Luhrmann.
Thomas du Prรฉ de Saint Maur, Head of Global Creative Resources Fragrance and Beauty Division for CHANEL, and Fine Jewelry and Watches Division since 2013, continues to carry on the legend of Nยฐ5. By choosing actress Marion Cotillard and director Johan Renck in 2020, he asserts its absolute modernity once more and further perpetuates the fantasy of this legendary fragrance.
THE LUXURY OF SIMPLICITY
With Nยฐ5, Gabrielle Chanel created an abstract fragrance that changed the history of perfumery, a welcome shock to the senses that was impossible to associate with any particular flower.
As for its presentation, Chanel designed a minimalist bottle that allowed the amber colour of the fragrance to take centre stage. The flat shape, similar to that of a hip flask, was designed for movement and speed, for a pocket or travel kit. For the first time, the stopper featured the interlocking double C logo. The labelโs radical simplicity was consistent with the spirit of the times.
Gabrielle Chanel said, โAlways remove, never add.โ Throughout the decades, the understated, elegant design of Nยฐ5 has remained mostly unchanged.
In 1921, the choice was made to construct the bottle from thin glass. In 1924, the bottle was redesigned with bevelled edges in order to reinforce its angles. The changes that followed were mostly of an aesthetic nature and reflected the desire to maintain the modern, yet timeless look of the iconic fragrance. In 1970, the year that the CHANEL typeface was created and formalized, the label design and logo that we know today appeared on the bottle for the first time, still featuring the Houseโs signature black and white colours. During this same year, the bottle was crowned with a thicker, more imposing stopper in order to stay current with the trends of the time. In 2012, the Packaging Creation Studio chose to refine the label and update its design. It is now smaller and gives greater visual prominence to the Nยฐ5 trademark associated with CHANEL.
Nยฐ5 is also highly regarded in the art world. In 1959, the Nยฐ5 box was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Then, in the 1980s, painter Andy Warhol dedicated a series of nine screen prints to the fragrance, cementing its status as a pop culture icon.
The three fundamentals of Nยฐ5 โ its revolutionary scent, the excellence of its raw materials, and its radical packaging โ are to CHANEL what grammar is to language, determining the style of all other CHANEL fragrances.
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