Chanel's new No5 L'Eau EDT

Lily-Rose Depp is the face of Chanel’s latest fragrance, No.5 L’Eau. Following in the footsteps of her mother, Vanessa Paradis, the 17-year-old models for the most famous name in perfume. And she’s also impossibly beautiful, like her mother!

But let’s talk about the fragrance. Chanel No5 is probably the most iconic perfume in the world, agreed? It ushered perfumery into a new era, with its code-like name, and its unique scent. It’s actually an incredible fragrance in that it is classic, yet modern, and is utterly timeless, opassed from generation to generation, and loved as much by the next as the last one.

And the perfumers at House Chanel have never rested on their laurels, despite the success of their original No5. In 1924, just three years after the creation of the original Parfum, Ernest Beaux interpreted it as an Eau de Toilette.

In 1986, Jacques Polge created the Eau de Parfum. Steadfastly ‘5’ and totally new. Twenty-two years later, he dared to breathe new life into the formula with Eau Première – which I love to this day!  Now, in 2016, it is perfumer Olivier Polge’s turn to capture the essence of his time with the creation of N°5 L’EAU. And he has reinvented the fragrance into an EDT formula that is lovely.

Giving preference to aldehydes with the scent of orange rind and abandoning the more metallic ones, increasing the vibrancy of the zests and removing the powder from the base, rendering the woods more dynamic and adding green to the ylang-ylang, making the jasmine as light as air and decreasing the vanilla – that’s how he did it, and the result is lovely.

It’s fresh and light but unmistakably No5. It opens with citrus notes of lemon, mandarin and orange, and those aldehydes selected by Olivier Polge.
And then, the floral heart, with rose and jasmine and ylang ylang. The dry down is vetiver, cedar, and soft cottony musk notes. Lovely.

It’s not a cologne, or a watered down version of the original, it’s its own fragrance, and if you love no5, I think you’ll like this one too. The textured cardbopard packaging is lovely too – unmistakably No5, with the bottl silhouette embossed in the textured cardboard.

This new Chanel No5 L’Eau is available now, from Chanel counters nationwide, in two sizes – 50ml £68 and 100ml £96.