No. 18

N°18 is named for an address. Chanel's Fine Jewelry boutique stands at 18 Place Vendome, the octagonal Parisian square whose shape the house borrowed for the stopper of the N°5 bottle and for the faces of its watches, and where Gabrielle Chanel lived for decades at the Ritz. This was among the first Les Exclusifs to appear, arriving in 2007 under Jacques Polge with no printed credit, and Chanel describes it as an eau de parfum as luminous as a precious gem, which is a fair warning: this is a fragrance about brilliance and hardness rather than warmth.

Everything here turns on ambrette seed, the seed of a hibiscus relative, and it is one of the strangest materials in fine perfumery. It is a musk that comes from a plant, and it smells simultaneously of pear skin, warm cloth, wine and something faintly metallic. Chanel builds the composition around it with rose, rose geranium and lavender above and sandalwood beneath, and the result is a fruity-floral that has been drained of all sweetness. There is a mineral, cool, almost wet-stone quality running through the middle, with iris and violet powder drifting across it. Some people smell an expensive powder compact. Others smell fermented pear and rubber. Both are reading the same fragrance correctly.

That divisiveness is real and worth stating plainly: N°18 has the lowest average rating of any Les Exclusifs in wide circulation, and it is not a fragrance to buy unsniffed. When it suits someone, though, nothing else smells like it, and it works beautifully in daylight and in dry heat, where its cool tension is a relief rather than a puzzle.

On skin it is moderate: six to eight hours in the current eau de parfum concentration, with projection that settles quickly into a close radiance. One point of housekeeping: N°18 was first sold as an eau de toilette and is bottled now at eau de parfum strength, so a current bottle is richer than the 2007 release most of the early commentary is about. Try it on skin, wait an hour, then decide.