No. 5 is legendary. So legendary that the legend has it that it's the most bought perfume of which most bottles stand on someone's vanities with the content slowly rotting away. I don't really remember sniffing it on someone on the street.
My mother is a good example. We went for a holiday and for some reason, I packed my No. 5 to wear there, not something beach-worthy and summery. My mother is kept in dark about my perfume passion and I don't have a vanity (1) where I'd display all the bottles so she didn't know and upon seeing the bottle, she said Whoa, a Chanel, that had to be incredibly expensive, can you afford that, blah, blah. The legend, again. Mom kept borrowing it all holiday long and then I said If you like it, keep it. She did – now it's displayed on her vanity and as far as I can see, totally unused because it's The Chanel That Need to be Saved for Better Occasions. I think I'll steal it away from her.
I do like No. 5. There were gossips circulating that starting with 2010, amounts of jasmine would be regulated stricter and since jasmine is one of No. 5's main constituents, I wanted to stash up.
I was aware of the 1997 limited edition, prepared in cooperation with Andy Warhol Foundation and I happened to bump upon one and bought it. So, now, I'm one of the 27 000 people who own it.
See, numbered.
I expected that the whole package would be in the Warholesque style. Like, the inner box in shades of pink and some funky silkscreen print on the bottle. I always hesitate to tear open the packages so it took me several weeks to actually dare and to my disappointment, in the pink box, there was a booklet with some information on this special edition... and the plain ole white Chanel outer box which contained the plain ole two-part inner box.
There's even no pink silkscreen print on the bottle. No fun at all although it offered itself on a silver plate.
Well.
I've re-read the whole Liza Dalby's almanac (2) because I needed some reference for something on the blog which I thought of while finding my way through the snow; go ahead and get the book, it's quite entertaining mixture of gardening and observation of natural phenomena blended with observations of fellow humans. However, upon reading, I remembered: the passage where Dalby talks about having left a bottle of No. 5 on Murasaki Shikibu's grave (3).
The snow changed the general logistics and planning. The dog is buried down in the garden while the ashes of my grandma are still somewhere in the garage. We don't have any family grave, the grandma in the garage could be thought to have been raised by hyenas if her mother were not remembered as one of the kindest people ever. Anyhow, grandma was a thrifty bitch and since it would be expensive to get an actual grave, with some sort of stone and such, she got her parents and the grandma cremated and the ashes tossed in the common ground in the cemetery and sold the grave of her brother which she inherited from her mother. Like, the grave, not the brother. My mother's kin do have graves in those various Podunks and Anytowns and since that part of the family kept arguing and not talking to their parents and siblings, my mother has no idea which cousin or auntie is buried where. And, she's fascinated with cemeteries. She wants a tomb with a weeping angel or sad Christ or something similarly cute. And because people may thing bad of us if someone found out about the different treatment of the dog and the grandma (I'm telling you, the dog did have a better character), she decided to get a grave and make it a sort of cenotaph to all those grandmas. Well, the snow prevented this so the grandma (who wasn't raised by hyenas but behaved like that) needs to rest in the garage for a few days more.
Erm... got a bit away from No. 5. Which reminds me, I have Numéro Cinq by Molyneux somewhere around here. Or, next time?
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(1) well, I do. Mom bought me one, reasoning that I said I could use a mirror and this one was cheap and has a pretty mirror and also some cute little drawers. Now, there's a piece of furniture which doesn't fit among the simple and angular birch stuff I have here, it blocks space and it's of no use. Please, folks, don't give me furniture unless you exactly know what I want. Puh-leeze.
(2) whose name I always forget. So, upon some rummaging in the shelves, voila: East Wind Melts the Ice, Chatto & Windus, London, 2007, ISBN 987-0-701-18104-8 for the nice hardback edition with a sleeve in shimmery golden paper.
(3) fiy, page 189
