It’s tough to assume of a perfume extra renown than Chanel No. 5, that highly effective and hyper-feminine scent that Gabrielle Chanel conceived in 1921 as “a girl’s fragrance with the scent of a girl.”
For years, it has trailed into rooms behind the likes of Anna Wintour, Lauren Hutton, and Marilyn Monroe, who as soon as quipped she wore nothing to mattress save for 5 drops of the fragrance.
The scent has permeated tradition arguably greater than another, influencing Andy Warhol (who original Pop artwork odes to its modern glass flacon), Richard Avedon, Ridley Scott, and Baz Luhrmann, who directed campaigns for the perfume fronted by stars like Nicole Kidman and Catherine Deneuve.
Marilyn Monroe with Chanel No. 5 fragrance. (Photo by Ed Feingersh/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
In 1959, the Museum of Modern Art acquired a No.5 bottle and packaging for its everlasting assortment. And a new guide penned by German historian Karl Schlögel entitled dives into how the perfume got here to be, marking all of the methods wherein its creation was not solely an olfactory revelation, however an vital lesson in historical past—a story rife with political intrigue and household betrayal that dates all the way in which again to the Russian (*5*).
Indeed, tales abound about Chanel No. 5, which celebrates its one centesimal birthday this yr.
In celebration, the home of Chanel has designed its newest assortment of excessive jewellery in its honor—the primary to be devoted wholly to a fragrance.
Weegee (1899–1968) taking a {photograph} of a girl in a bathing swimsuit inside a Chanel No. 5 bottle within the late Fifties. (Photo by Weegee (Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography/Getty Images)
The assortment contains 123 items and was designed by Chanel’s wonderful jewellery director, Patrice Leguéreau, who took inspiration from the boldness of Gabrielle Chanel’s 1932 Bijoux de Diamants assortment (her first and solely jewellery assortment), which was crafted solely in platinum and diamonds that collectively broke the codes of French excessive jewellery on the time.
Many objects, the truth is, have been constructed with versatile buildings that wearers might bend and regulate to their will. The level of the gathering was to have a good time free-spirited energy. In a daring gesture, Chanel offered her items in an exhibition at her non-public townhouse at 29 Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris on the our bodies of eerily practical wax figures stated to be impressed by Chanel’s Surrealist pals, resembling Salvador Dalí.
A wax model carrying a necklace and jewelled headband designed by French clothier Coco Chanel, Paris, circa 1932. (Photo by Albert Harlingue/Roger Viollet through Getty Images)
In some ways, this newest excessive jewellery assortment represents a lot of Chanel’s historical past via each its homage to the No. 5 perfume, and its echoes to its founder’s jewellery line.
But essentially the most putting piece is little question its 55.55 white-gold and diamond necklace, which simulates the curves of the No. 5 bottle in a sequence of dazzling, custom-cut diamonds and platinum. At its heart is a show-stopping emerald-cut diamond, crafted to weigh precisely 55.55 karats in homage to Gabrielle Chanel’s favourite quantity.
The stone is ready in an 18-karat white gold bezel and is framed by 104 spherical and 42 baguette diamonds, which collectively type the No. 5 bottle form and its prismic stopper.
Chanel’s 55.55 necklace. Photo courtesy Chanel.
From there, a cascade of spherical and pear-shaped diamonds fall down across the backside of the large heart diamond, calling consideration to the decollete of the wearer.
The numerous elements are secured by invisible white-gold fixtures, which culminate in a diamond-encrusted quantity five-shape clasp on the again of the wearer’s neck.
The piece, notes the home, immortalizes the important thing components of the perfume’s attract: its bottle, its stopper, its quantity, its flowers, and its sillage.
Unfortunately for these dying to strive it on, Chanel has chosen to maintain the work in its archive so it may possibly stay safely half of the home’s legacy for years to come back.
Still, there are a lot of different items to ponder, and readers can discover out extra concerning the assortment, which formally debuts subsequent month, right here.
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