The Maison celebrates the centenary of its iconic perfume with a capsule collection featuring surprising packaging
Text by: Sandra Bardin
Editing by: Domenico Costantini
Coco Chanel belongs to that breed of creative geniuses, artists and designers, authors of works that are perpetually in tune with the zeitgeist, always modern decade after decade. Her secret? The ability to think outside the box. Breaking free from conventions, surprising with daring combinations of materials and shapes. Making creations from simple, almost elementary lines and turning them into masterpieces of style. This is the fashion that has enchanted generations of women, crossing the century in souplesse.
The same goes for his iconic fragrance, N°5, with its unusual aldehydrated note, created in 1921 and immediately successful, but which would have become a symbol of femininity and glamour even without the formidable assistance of Marilyn Monroe, unwitting testimonial in the 1950s: “What do I wear to bed? Two drops of Chanel N°5”.
To celebrate its first centenary, the Maison is now launching Chanel Factory 5, a limited edition of 17 bath-body-fragrance products with the aim of “offering the experience of luxury through objects of everyday reality”, explains Thomas du Pré de Saint Maur, head of Global Creative Resources Fragrance and Beauty. “We have transferred the identity of N°5 into functional, everyday containers that, dressed in Chanel’s graphic codes, acquire the allure of luxury by becoming objects of desire.” The new line is in fact a return to the perfume’s first packaging, an ordinary laboratory bottle that later became the iconic bottle we know: in the same daring and irreverent spirit, the Factory 5 packaging plays with the shapes of popular household objects. L’Huile Corps in a tin with a lubricant-like spout, Les Galets de Bain in an airtight jar for tea, L’Emulsion Corps in a detergent bottle, Le Gel Douche in a paint can, Le Gel Pailletté in a mechanic’s bin…
LES GALETS DE BAIN – FACTORY 5 COLLECTION
The collection is currently available in the brand’s Fragrance and Beauty Boutiques and on the Chanel e-commerce site; in Italy, at La Rinascente in Milan and Rome. But for those who wish to visit the Chanel Factory 5 remotely, there is a digital version online, a playful setting that shows, as in a real factory, the various stages of the production chain from which the items in the collection are derived. Sophisticated and fun containers that, if you wish, can remain even when the limited edition has used up its scented contents, a reminder that Chanel elegance is timeless.
