Few scents conjure up pure unbridled glamour quite like Chanel No 5, and even fewer have done so without diminishing in popularity over the course of 100 years. Even more rare: it smells the same now as the very first Chanel No 5 did back in 1921, when Ernest Beaux handed Coco Chanel that first bottle that was signed off bearing Coco’s lucky number of 5.
Today, it’s probably the most well-known women’s perfume going, owing some of its fame to its sheer endurance and the rest of it to wearers who’ve declared it their favourite, most notably Marilyn Monroe, who in 1960 confirmed in an interview with Marie Claire that it was all she wore to bed.
Margot Robbie is the latest ambassador for the perfume, telling us that the floral scent that’s underpinned with patchouli, amber, and vanilla aligned with the character she plays in the ad campaign See You At 5, who she describes as “quite powerful and assertive, self-possessed, independent.”
Robbie is joined in the short film for the brand by Jacob Elordi, with whom she’ll also star in the forthcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation. In this video filmed on set, she explains why she felt drawn to represent a complex perfume she describes as “specific and unique”, saying that she “encapsulates this idea of femininity, not to box it in, but showing how complex and nuanced it is.”
She’s clearly done her research: Chanel No 5 was notably different from its peers back in the 1920s because of its complex nature, bucking the trend for making single note, floral fragrances and infusing aldehydes, which are responsible for that sense of fizzy lift in the scent and which, back in the 1920s, were a novel addition. The idea was to made something “artificial, like a dress, meaning manufactured... I want a perfume that’s a composition.”
The result is, according to Robbie, “alluring, powerful, independent, enigmatic, abstract,” even to this day, which probably explains why it still sells around 10 million bottles a year worldwide. Well, that and the heavyweight names like Robbie who keep it in the limelight.
