The Mul farm in Grasse has been growing roses and jasmine for Chanel for generations, and these precious essences are used in No 5 parfum. ELLE takes a look at the fields and interviews Chanel in-house perfumer, Christopher Sheldrake. Did you know that jasmine and strawberries share many similar components?

You can watch the video over at ELLE’s exclusive look at the creation of No 5. Sheldrake narrates the video.

Chanel claims that each 30ml bottle of No 5 parfum contains 1,000 jasmine flowers and 12 roses from Grasse. Since 1 kg of jasmine absolute and rose oil require 6 000 0000 jasmine blossoms and 1 600 000 rose blossoms, respectively, you can work out for yourself how much essence No 5 contains. On the other hand, what makes No 5 special is not just the rare materials, but their balance and harmony. Since the flower fields in Grasse have been steadily disappearing, the Mul farm is especially precious.

Photo by Bois de Jasmin

Whether you’re interested in art, food, fashion or perfume, Barcelona has plenty to offer. The capital of Catalonia, an autonomous community of Spain, it stretches along the Mediterranean Sea and looks towards The Pyrenees. It’s a major cultural hub in Europe, and you can spend an entire vacation simply exploring all of Barcelona’s treasures. While numerous guidebooks will help you build an activity packed itinerary without much effort, I want to highlight a little gem that’s all too easy to miss–the Barcelona Perfume Museum, or Museu del Perfum in Catalan.

The museum was born in the 1960s, when Perfumería Regia, founded in 1928 by Don Josep Giralt, made its home on Passeig de Gràcia, one of the most glittering avenues in Barcelona. This is where you can find the masterpieces of Antoni Gaudí like Casa Batlló and Casa Milà “La Pedrera” and the delicate mosaics of Casa Lleó Morera by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Museu del Perfum is more modest by contrast, but its central location and unusual collection of more than five thousand perfume related artifacts makes it a worthwhile stop for a perfume lover.

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Today we have our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread. You can use this space to ask any questions about perfume, including fragrance recommendations.

How does it work:

1. Please post your requests or questions as comments here. You can also use this space to ask any fragrance related questions. To receive recommendations that are better tailored to your tastes, you can include details on what you like and don’t like, your signature perfumes, and your budget. And please let us know how your search goes and what you end up sampling.

2. Then please check the thread to see if there are other requests you can answer. Your responses are really valuable for navigating the big and sometimes confusing world of perfume, so let’s help each other!

To make this thread easier to read, when you reply to someone, please click on the blue “reply” link under their comment.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

Courtney takes us on a perfume walk around Boston.

At face value, Boston isn’t exactly a perfume destination. It lacks dedicated perfume boutiques like Aedes in New York or the Scent Bar in LA, and the culture of the city doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the celebration of fragrance (Bostonians have a bit too much Yankee practicality to fritter their energy and thought into perfume). But as a resident, I feel fortunate that I can try out a wide array of luxury and niche fragrances within a few subway stops, and if you find yourself in Boston there’s plenty of perfume to be found if you know where to look.

The best part of the city for sniffing is Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, the center of shopping in Boston, with blocks of boutiques tucked into the brownstones of Newbury Street, as well the Copley Place and Prudential Center malls (adjacent to each other and conveniently joined by a sky bridge so you can shop your way from end to end in the winter without ever having to don your hat and gloves).

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Of the three new extraits de parfum in Chanel’s Les Exclusifs collection, 1932 seemed most promising, but it turned out that Beige and Jersey held more surprises. As I mentioned in my review of 1932, if you didn’t like the Eau de Toilette, the parfum isn’t going to change your mind, but in the case of Beige and Jersey, the richness, new accents and nuances might make a positive difference for those who were ambivalent about the original versions.

Beige

I already enjoyed Beige for its understated elegance, and while I proclaim my undying love for Coromandel and Cuir de Russie, I wear this delicate white floral far more often. It certainly won’t turn heads the way Coromandel does or make you time travel to the Roaring Twenties like Cuir de Russie, but if you need a well-made fragrance that feels like a comfortable silk slip, Beige is perfect.

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