An expedition to Grasse, the heart of French perfumery, uncovers the secrets behind one of the world’s most-sought-after scents, Chanel No. 5.
, the fragrance famously doesn’t evoke one. Rather, one might say it smells like abstract art — a composition beyond nature, a rebellion against the demure lily of the valley-centric zeitgeist of its time. Instead, it produces an intense hit of powdery, soapy cleanness, which is the result of a lavish dose of aldehydes. To borrow Coco Chanel’s blunt brief to her genius perfumer, Ernest Beaux: It smells like the scent of a woman and nothing else.
Grasse’s specialness is rooted in its fertile soil and a rare idyllic microclimate; it’s bathed in plentiful sun, softened by the Mediterranean breeze from the south and sheltered by the Préalpes to the north. “It’s never too cold and never too warm,” explains head perfumer Olivier Polge, only the fourth nose in Chanel’s history. “Everything grows in very gentle surroundings. The flowers are not burned by the sun; they don’t frostbite.
If you want to know how Chanel No. 5 is made, you need to know the quirks of jasmine and how its star-shaped white blossoms unfurl at nightfall and must be harvested before the fragrant oil wanes at daybreak. From August to October, the ritual begins at earliest dawn: Shaded by brimmed hats and scarves and armed with wicker baskets, Mul’s pickers can harvest the whole field within two mornings before starting anew.
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