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Sunday, April 03, 2011

An Old Chanel No.5 perfume bottle

Its my mum’s present from a handsome young American. During her time, it is unheard of to be associated with “gui loh” aka white ghost aka white foreigner. On that faithful day, there was the “gui loh” trying to pursue my mum with flowers, guitar, sound speaker (because when ask what it was she want, she blurted out guitar set) and the faithful small sample of Old Channel No.5 came along with it. My father happened to be there on business deals and hence took notice of her. Well he pursued her rentlessly for 6 months before she agreed to marry him. End of story.



While scrying around her drawer looking for the “Treasures of untold beauty” aka vintage necklace to the eye of a 7 years old pirate that would match my ridiculous outfit of black skirt on top of the head with a scarf for an eye patch, I found this innocent looking white box in her drawer. Loh and behold, the Chanel No.5 in a 5ml bottle in original packaging not opened still sealed. The pirate then didn’t understand the significance until much later, preferring the vintage necklace.

Zipping back to 2011,
I have heard so much hype about Chanel No.5 and when I went to try them out at the Chanel counter, they stink heaven high. Not at all what I thought it would be, the dreamy powdery scent that Marilyn Monroe wore to bed with nothing else on her heavenly body. I bet to my last dollar had Marilyn been alive, she would have pulverized the whole bottle in comparison to the modern perfumes and the story of Chanel No.5 would be no more than an innovative idea of the past.

Curiosity could not keep me away from the bottle and I finally did the unthinkable. I open it. I want to relive the moment of the golden days where everyone is so taken with Chanel No.5. Where whisper of the name would cause quiver in the knickers. The delicious feeling that overcame them at the mention of that name. The feeling that the perfume can evoke, is like weeds to artist, marajauna to poets, the dreamy hullucination and inspiration that one can gather from it.

Not.

I suppose to be fair it must have been a revolutionary idea back then to use synthetic materials to compose a perfume. It is innocuous at best, but to give it the legend it held, I thought it’s a bit far fetch at this point. It started out with a bang of adehydic floral with powdery notes and a hint of something sour (could be due to oxidation). Well it definitely smells like my grandma. Towards the end, the dry down notes remind me of strawberry shortcake dolls, the 90’s dose everything including toys with synthetic fragrance mantra, mayhaps more elegant.

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