Note Pyramid
Nº 5
Chanel Nº 5 Eau de Toilette Purse Spray Gift Set 60ml wraps the most famous perfume ever made in its most portable form, which makes it one of the easier presents to get right.
The purse spray is small, refillable and designed to live in a handbag, so the fragrance travels instead of sitting on a dressing table. Sixty millilitres split into cartridges goes a long way, and the case can be reloaded for years.
The composition is Ernest Beaux's and it is the reason perfumery changed direction. Ylang ylang opens it, dense and sweet and almost fruity, with neroli adding a crisp, bitter brightness beside it. Then the aldehydes, which are the whole point: they give that scrubbed, fizzing, faintly soapy sparkle that nothing in nature smells like, and in 1921 no perfume had used them this way. They lift the flowers off the ground and make the opening shimmer rather than sit.
The middle is rose and jasmine, used generously, the rose clean and full and the jasmine creamy and warm, and it is the clearest statement of what a floral heart can be. The base is quiet and smooth: vanilla for a soft sweetness, vetiver for a cool, earthy dryness and sandalwood for a dense, mild grain that holds the whole thing to the skin. Eau de toilette is the lightest reading of N°5 and the most wearable in daylight, with four or five hours of presence and a close trail after that. It is sold to women, and it suits any occasion where you would rather be elegant than fashionable.
Chanel was begun in 1910 as a millinery shop on rue Cambon in Paris, and the perfume and cosmetics company was formally set up in 1924 with Beaux as its first in house perfumer.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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