Gardénia

Gardenia is a piece of Chanel's founding mythology rendered in perfume. In 1925 Gabrielle Chanel asked Ernest Beaux - the perfumer she had met through Grand Duke Dmitri and who had already given her N°5 - for a fragrance built on her favourite flower, the white camellia. The problem was that camellia has almost no smell. So Beaux composed a gardenia instead, and Chanel has been open about this ever since: the house describes Gardenia as an olfactory representation of the camellia, the flower she pinned to lapels and turned into buttons, brooches and hat trims.

The gardenia here is an accord rather than an extract, because gardenia cannot be distilled either. Chanel builds it from jasmine, tuberose and ylang-ylang, then floods it with soft orange blossom for luminosity. Green notes cut the opening so it does not go straight to cream. Underneath there is coconut lactone, sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli and a musk that gives it a faint warm-skin quality. The result is creamy, slightly waxy, thoroughly white-floral - the smell of a petal bruised between your fingers rather than of a bouquet.

It entered the Les Exclusifs line-up in 2007 and reaches shelves today at eau de parfum strength, which is not the 1925 formula and does not claim to be. A century of restrictions on natural and animalic materials has passed since Beaux mixed it. Take the current bottle as a faithful modern reading rather than a time capsule.

White florals amplify in heat, and this one does so generously - on a humid KwaZulu-Natal evening a single spray is plenty. In cooler air you can be freer with it. It is formal without being stuffy, and it suits an occasion where you want to be noticed for exactly one thing.

Longevity from the eau de parfum runs seven to nine hours with moderate to good projection in the first two, then a soft creamy skin scent. It is quieter than a full-throated tuberose soliflore, but it does not disappear, and the drydown is where most people fall for it.