Chanel No.5’s influence has been so profound, its name so classic, that even those who have no interest in beauty know exactly what it is. But No.5 is only a fraction of Chanel’s fragrance story, and in order to shine a spotlight on the rest of it, the house has just reintroduced 11 scents from its Les Exclusifs de Chanel collection, including No.5, in a new, luxuriously concentrated form – Les Extraits de Chanel. With the reinvention of the product range, its packaging, and in-store services, the house tells the story of Gabrielle Chanel’s impact on perfumery to a new audience.
Les Extraits de Chanel
Les Extraits de Chanel is a celebration of Gabrielle Chanel’s revolutionary approach to fragrance, with each scent in the collection offering insight into her equally unconventional life. Take, for instance, Coromandel, a fragrance inspired by Gabrielle’s passion for Chinese lacquered folding ‘Coromandel’ screens, which she scattered around her apartment to create a dark, labyrinthine environment. To evoke that same atmosphere, the Coromandel perfume blends patchouli with balsamic resins, deep red rose, and white chocolate notes to create a warm, seductive, and slightly gourmand scent that evolves drastically as it is worn.
On a lighter note, 1957 is a scent designed to commemorate Gabrielle’s trip to America to receive the Neiman Marcus Award for services in the field of fashion. An olfactory love story between France and America, it blends white musk (popular in 1990s American fragrances) with iris (historically used in Versailles to scent gloves and wigs).
Also notable is our personal favourite, Cuir de Russie, a fragrance crafted in the 1920s by the same perfumer as No.5. Inspired by Russian soldiers' boots and Gabrielle’s brief affair with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, it features a tar-like smokiness, leather, and a hint of mud for a scent that is refined but also slightly dirty.
All the fragrances within Les Extraits de Chanel are crafted with the highest-quality perfume extracts in the industry, and it is one of the last fragrance ranges existing today that has been crafted entirely by hand. It begins in Chanel’s own fields in Grasse, France, where each flower is harvested by hand for the best quality. They are then processed within an hour of picking, to retain the highest concentration of their scent, and it’s this proximity between flower and formula that makes Les Extraits de Chanel uniquely dense, with olfactory profiles that are impossible to find in any other perfume.
The packaging of the fragrances is designed to echo the luxury of the formulas inside. Each bottle is sealed using a 19th-century process known as baudruchage, which consists of applying a fine membrane of baudruche (a rubber-like substance) over the neck of the bottle, and securing it with two pieces of lacquered black cotton thread, ensuring the closure remains airtight and protecting the fragrance from oxidation. Each bottle comes with a set of scissors, specially designed to cut the strings that seal it.
The fragrances also come with a glass applicator tool that is dipped into the bottle and then used to blot the scent on the wrist, rather than the user applying it as a traditional spray. In all these ways, Les Extraits de Chanel is designed to carry on the tradition Gabrielle Chanel started: offering a unique take on perfumery, executed to the most exacting standards.