Liquid treasure: Chanel unveils Collection N°5

With a landmark high jewellery collection marking the centenary of N°5, Chanel’s Patrice Leguéreau finds a sparkling expression for the maison’s pioneering spirit

Chanel Collection N°5

In Paris, visitors to Olivier Polge’s office and laboratories would be hard-pressed to truffle out the original recipe to Chanel’s epochal N°5 perfume. The brand’s house perfumer, whose work has won awards and who inherited the post from his father Jacques Polge in 2013, keeps the prized archival document hidden from view, under lock and key. “I have the 1921 formula, handwritten by Ernest Beaux, in the safe,” he says. “Part of my job each and every day is to preserve N°5.”

Polge’s conservationist efforts extend to the fragrance’s naturally derived ingredients, which in the south of France are harvested seasonally and count, “citruses at the beginning of the year, then orange blossoms, roses in May, jasmine in September, ylang-ylang several times a year. It requires constant vigilance; [it’s] a job that is rooted in history”. Much like its traditional production, N°5 will forever form part of the heritage brand’s biography; at Chanel, the fragrance has also galvanised innovation, as it did recently when Polge joined a research trip to Grasse, mapped out by Patrice Leguéreau.

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