Era il 1921 quando Gabrielle Chanel prese l’ambiziosa decisione di porre il marchio della sua casa di moda su una fragranza, che si rivelò in seguito il prodotto di profumeria di lusso più longevo della storia.

Beaux presented five bottle samples to Gabrielle but it was the fifth one that she knew was the scent, and thus named, Chanel N°5. It’s wrapped in a simple rectangular bottle with a unique geometry shape stopper shaped like Paris’ Place Vendôme. “The identity of Chanel N°5 is at once a bygone era bottled, summoning the glamour and luxury that characterized much of Coco Chanel’s adult life, yet was firmly part of the conversation of what constituted modernity, down to the Precisionist lines of its now-iconic bottle and stopper. It was, and remains straightforward it its appearance, unmoored by the winds of trends, steadfastly both of this time and of another” muses Kulig. 

After the liberation of Paris by the Americans in August 1944, American GIs flocked to the City of Lights and lined up at Chanel’s Rue Cambon boutique to buy bottles of N°5 for their wives and fiancés. Kulig points out how the scent has, “maintained its luxury status, while actively marketing itself en masse. The scent has been a coveted costly good, and U.S. Army commissary best seller – a drugstore staple and toilette stalwart. It is symbol of France’s long-held monopoly on taste, an inextricable part of a luxury market and source of great morale.”