I have tried many perfumes. I have tried many fragrances, some I liked better than Chanel No. 5.The worst of them were the ones that deteriorated too quickly. The worst was the discoloration of the pigment, which made it look unattractive. Perhaps one of the charms of Chanel No. 5 is that it has survived for so long because its golden color continues to shine in its simple bottle even after it has lost its perfumed scent.

A perfume is a symbol of its time. Therefore, when the time has passed, the fragrance becomes old-fashioned. For example, a young woman would not want to wear the perfume that his mother wore, or more specifically, that his grandmother wore. The notes of the perfume change with the fashion of the clothes and the image of the woman. Chanel’s No. 5 remains a survivor in this context.

The perfumer of Chanel No. 5 was Ernest Beaux, a Russian. The perfume that was popular when he was born and grew up was a floral fragrance itself. The aldehydes, essential to Chanel No. 5, are essential to the harmony of the fragrance. Beaux never revealed the formula of the aldehyde in his life, and there is a paper claiming that the prototype of No. 5 was Rallet No. 1, which he sold to the real Rallet company in Imperial Russia. There are many doubts about this article and people’s misremembering and hearsay mislead them.

At the perfumer’s school in Grasse, France, students are given the task of reproducing Chanel No 5. There are more than 80 fragrances included in Chanel No 5. Jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, rose, musk, coumarin, etc. Recreating them on your own is like playing chess with a strong grandmaster. Sensibility, experience and knowledge are the key, but so is light and luck.

Perhaps the famous perfumers who work for Vuitton and Dior have also passed this challenge because they grew up in Grasse from an early age. Jacques Cavallier , the perfumer of Vuitton, in particular, has created several fragrances that surpass those of Chanel. It may be a misnomer to say that he has surpassed Chanel, but he has created fragrances that do not flatter the ordinary people in the declining art world of the 21st century. Even he has not yet reached the beauty of post-degradation. However, I will not lower my opinion of it, because it is perfect among the artists of today, but In my opinion that it will be a difficult perfume to last for centuries. If the intention was to make it exclusively for today, it would be perfect.

There are three types of perfumes: natural, synthetic and concoctions. There are more than 200 natural fragrances, some of which are animal, and the musk in No5 is synthetic according to the Washington Convention.

Those who knew No5 in the 1980s will have noticed a change in the fragrance. And

I’m pretty sure I heard that Chanel No. 5 was reformulated a few years ago after a toxic substance was found in it.

I couldn’t find an article about it. I remembered this because I bought No. 5 again. For a while I used to love the perfumes of Vuitton and Dior, but then I came back to them. Then I felt that the scent was different from before.  Can’t imagine the pretty pink roses from the outside,” Rose de Mai “is the strongest scent of roses, and Chanel No. 5 is like a collection of all the images of roses. However, the recent scent of No. 5 is more powdery and less concentrated. I am sorry if I remember wrongly, but it may be inevitable that the formula changes due to circumstances.

Fragrance is even more fragile than sound. They cannot be stored for long periods of time and, like music, there is no way to record them. It depends on the memory and the record, and even if the record is reproduced, the fragrance can be different depending on the sensibility of the perfumer. It is inevitable that fragrances change with the times. The only thing that can be recorded is the scent, which is our own memory. And it’s not something you can share as much as you might think. Many people may love it, but that doesn’t mean that their friends do.

And since perfumes change their scent depending on the human skin, it’s difficult to reconcile memories, even if your friends love to wear matching ones. Perhaps the scents of the seasons are easier to recall again and again. The charm of perfumes, however, is that they deteriorate and die very easily. In the case of a painter, it would be like the disappearance of an expensive painting, but with perfumes, the price of which, including the perfumer’s labour, is high enough for the average person to afford, we accept the fate of fading away. As Chekhov said, “Simplicity is the sister of genius”, and perfume is a way of simplifying, in a small bottle, what we all follow and what we are attached to.

A whiff of the perfume and I am instantly comfortable in my skin.  It is a moment that will never return.　Scent is more solitary than we think, it affects others without us knowing it. The boyfriend who looked back at me and said “I thought that was your perfume” when I arrived, the friend who said that only the scent remained when I left, the hairdresser who said that when he opened his wardrobe and was happy to note that it smelled good, it was your coat. Each of these fragrances makes our memories richer. We are all going to disappear one day, and these little moments are not recorded. We are all going to disappear one day, and these little moments are not recorded.  Some of my friends who have spoken of my scent have already died, and the memory of my memory is slipping away.

It is almost a loss.

I love the fragrance because it does not lie in its transience.

• 

• 

• 

Louis Vuitton

Perfumer: Jacques Cavallier

Attraplave is my favourite. Peony is not available as a perfume, so it is a creation of the perfumer. Probably Attraplave is the closest. It’s not dull, it’s mature, but it shows the lovely impression of Peony.