Chanel No. 5 Review: Does It Smell Good And Last Longer? [2024]

It is said that perfumes have personalities, which they transfer to their users. The perfume you wear tells your story, gives you a new personality, and/or adds volume to your individuality. This can explain why people address you differently when you use different perfumes.

The truth is, you’re a different individual when you use a different perfume with a different fragrance. This is one of the major reasons you should go for perfumes that will give you the kind of personality you desire. How and where to find that perfume is another thing you have to worry about so you don’t go for the wrong one. In most cases, it is better to go for the best-selling perfumes or those that share their DNAs.

Some perfumes are regarded as the best in different parts of the world. People treat and view them with so much admiration and respect to the extent of singing their praises. What is more? Perfumes with such status are very expensive. The costlier they are, the more prestigious they become.

But they are people’s favourites despite being very expensive. Many people don’t mind saving money for months to buy a bottle of such perfume. And they reserve them for special occasions.

But, are those perfumes really what they are said to be? Are they truly as perfect as people assume them to be? Are they real or overhyped? What’s so special about them? Are they worth their prices? Should people bother investing in them? Why do people like them?

These are some of the questions flowing through the minds of a lot of cautious buyers when they want to go for any of those world’s best-selling perfumes. You can’t blame them for being cautious because all that glitters is not gold. This is why it is ok for you to ask questions about Chanel No. 5 perfumes before investing your money in any of them.

Much has been said about Chanel’s No. 5 perfume that it’s only right to find out what makes this perfume tick. I’ve listened to the owner of a perfume shop say that a bottle of Chanel’s No. 5 is sold every five seconds in different parts of the world. I don’t know how he arrived at this conclusion but I won’t be surprised if he’s right. My reason is simple: the high rate of positive reviews the perfume receives is amazing.

Hardly will you see anyone that rates it down. The reviews this perfume has received and continues to receive make one believe Chanel’s No. 5 is a perfect perfume. Maybe it is; who knows.

Nevertheless, this review will scrutinize the mystery behind this perfume. To demystify Chanel’s No. 5, the review will start with the history of the perfume to know if the secret lies there.

Then, it will look into its main accords and notes. Finally, it will scrutinize what some users have to say about the perfume to find out what it does that others don’t. Hopefully, by the end of the review, we will be able to tell if the perfume is worth its praises and price.

History of Chanel’s No. 5

One of the selling points of Chanel’s No. 5 perfume is its history. The reason the perfume was launched and how the fragrance was chosen all added to the mystery of the perfume. No. 5 would not have been considered the right choice for women of class if it wasn’t made with that intention. Each time you open a bottle of the golden-coloured fragrant liquid, the first few things you will think about are freshness, cleanliness, and class. Mysteriously, all these features are enshrouded in the history of the perfume.

Coco Chanel, the founder of the fashion house of Chanel, started her life with a humble beginning. Her father was a market stallholder while her mother was a laundrywoman. Guess what else: she was born and raised in a rural part of France. But she spent her teenage years at Aubazine, in a Cistercian convent.

She had to move to the convent when her mother died. Coco’s life with her mother, a laundrywoman, and in the convent, where cleanliness is encouraged and instilled, played a key role in the emergence of Chanel’s No. 5 as you will come to see later.

Coco later moved to Paris, where she established a fashion house that attracted the crème de la crème of the Paris society. Coco managed to find her way into the world of the elites and so her fashion house was dressing up wives and mistresses of the rich and the high in the Paris society.

Attending to these different groups of women influenced Coco’s decision to create a revolutionary perfume for women. Now, what pushed her into this? You won’t believe it. Coco noted the difference between the smell of the two groups of women that patronise her: the wives and the mistresses.

Coco noticed that you can tell a mistress from a wife through their smells. She discovered that the wives of the rich, who are usually blue-blooded, smell nice while the mistresses don’t. From her observations, the mistresses have an irritating, pungent, and repulsive smell that trails them.

Maybe she wouldn’t have found the smell offensive and desire to help the women get rid of it if her childhood and teenage years weren’t enshrouded with the importance of cleanliness. As a result, Coco began the search for a perfume that will help every woman, irrespective of her class and status, to acquire the personality of a lady of class: clean, fresh, affluent, soft, and cultured.

Now, how did No. 5 come into existence? Why does it have that name? How did the perfume get its unique fragrance? And why did it capture the world since it was launched in 1921? The answers to these questions will further demystify the perfume.

Remember Coco wanted to make women smell and feel clean and fresh all the time they wear her perfume. This means she will have to create a perfume with long-lasting longevity. But that proved difficult because, in those days, people use perfumes obtained from citrus (especially orange, lemon, and bergamot) but they don’t last long enough. Hence, they needed to keep retouching it. This can explain why those mistresses smell bad.

Fortunately for the perfume industry, a powerful pleasant smelling chemical known as the aldehydes was discovered by chemists within that period. But then, perfumers avoided the compounds because it was considered too bold and expressive. And so, the chemical was never applied to use, so to say, until Coco took a bold step and used it to create one of the world’s best perfumes.

After several trials without success, Coco met a French renowned perfumer, Ernest Beaux, in 1920 and gave him the job of finding a befitting perfume for her fashion house. Several months later, Beaux returned with ten vials, each containing a different perfume sample.

The vials were labelled 1 to 5 and then 20 to 24. Beaux believed that all the samples in the vials were perfect except for the one in the vial labelled 5, to which one of his staff mistakenly added an “overdose” of aldehydes. But then, that was the vial that caught Coco’s attention and its content was the perfume she turned into the world’s best for close to a century now. According to Coco, that vial contains “a woman’s perfume with the scent of a woman.” Go figure.

When Coco launched No. 5 in 1921, the perfume came as No. 5 Eau de Toilette, No. 5 Eau de Cologne, and No. 5 Parfum. In 1986, another perfumer, Jacques Polge, expanded what Beaux produced to include No. 5 Eau de Parfum. So, today, you can find No. 5 as parfum, eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and eau de cologne. You can also find No. 5 Hair Mist, No. 5 Shower Gel, No. 5 Body Lotion, No. 5 Body Cream, No. 5 Bath Soap, and No. 5 Hand Cream. All these were created later to give users the feel of a No. 5 ritual. Nevertheless, we are only concerned with the No. 5 perfume series here.

How does a No. 5 perfume smell?

The two most important things people consider before buying a perfume are the perfume’s longevity and fragrance. They check how the perfume smells, whether they find it offensive or not, and if they find it pleasant, how long the smell lasts. These are also what users of Chanel No. 5 perfume considered before going for it. But, in section, we will not discuss the longevity of the perfume; we will leave it until we get to the section that presents the users’ reviews. Here we will look at the fragrance of Chanel’s No. 5. 

The Main Accords

The main accords of a perfume tell you the story the perfume wants you to hear or read. They are the theme of the perfume. They are the imaginations, feelings, and thoughts the perfume creates in the mind of its user and the people around him or her. So, here are the things you can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell when you open a bottle of Chanel’s No. 5 perfume.

1. Woody: Though Chanel’s No. 5 perfume is for women, it has a woody note. This was, probably, included to add “independence”, “business-oriented”, “wealth”, and “seriousness” to the expressions the perfume gives. This can explain why many career women love this perfume.

2. Powdery: There is something soft, intimate, clean, fresh, and beautiful about a powdery note. Apart from these features, the note will also make you feel at home with the fragrance as well as keep you dry on a sweaty day.

3. Aldehydic: When someone opens a can of soda, what’s the first thing that leaves the can, apart from the fizzing sound? Pay attention next time and you will notice that while the soda is sizzling as if it can’t wait to come out of the caging can, it releases a sweet enticing smell that invites you to take a sip. This is also what happens to you when you smell the fizz of champagne. In perfumery, aldehyde gives perfumes the same features gases give soda and champagne. It fills your nostrils with the fragrance of the perfume and accentuates the imagery it creates. Aldehydes also remind people of a shower because it has a tang of soapy scent.

4. Iris Notes: Iris is a beautiful flower with a very subtle scent. The beauty of the flower lies in its scent and colours, which can come in any of the seven colours of the rainbow. So, if you spray this perfume and you know this flower, you will imagine it each time the fragrance sneaks into your nostril. Note that since you have associated this flower with the rainbow, when you smell its scent, you will also be reminded of the rainbow.

5. Fresh Notes: The fresh notes are there to make you feel cool, rejuvenated, and clean. Sometimes, this note gives you the feeling of cool breezy dawn or dusk.

6. White Floral Notes: The white floral notes in the perfume make its fragrance heady and exotic. The notes can make you think of jasmine, tuberose, lily of the valley, gardenia, and any other white flower you know.

7. Earthy Note: This can make you think about nature and its components. It will remind you of the time you went hiking and the smell of nature that accompanied you all through. When this note hits you, you will remember the smell of trees, woods, mosses, grasses, decaying and drying leaves, dirt, and so on.

8. Musky Note: This note is hard to describe and hard to miss too. Its main feature is that it reminds people of the smell of a male deer. So, why did Coco choose this type of note for her perfume despite creating them for women? Well, the answer is, “That is part of the mystery”.

9. Citrus Note: This note does not only makes you feel fresh, happy, and energised but also gives you the taste of lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, bergamot, mandarin, and/or other citrus fruit. A splash of this on your body or clothes can add a spring to your steps.

10. Yellow Floral Note: This note makes you think of yellow flowers, such as mimosa, daffodil, and roses. The yellow floral note will give you a soft powdery sweet scent that can make you desire candies. 

The Notes

Every good perfume has layers or depths of fragrances known as notes. The notes of a perfume usually come in three stages, according to the time they were activated. The first stage is a set of fragrances you will receive when you open a perfume bottle or spray it. This group is known as the top notes or head notes. At this stage, the fragrance is strong, enticing, and, sometimes, intoxicating. Many perfumers use their perfumes’ top notes to attract buyers. But then, this stage doesn’t last long. The top notes of some perfumes do not last more than 15 minutes. So, when you want to buy a perfume, you have to wait for the top notes to deactivate so you can get the heart of the perfume.

After the top notes have dissipated, the next stage comes in. This is a new set of fragrances that will waft into your nostrils minutes after you wore it. These fragrances are known as the middle notes or heart notes. They are the main fragrances of the perfume, so to say, because they are the ones that will stay with you as well as the trail you all day. When people tell you, you smell good, they are talking about your perfume’s middle notes. This set of fragrances is the most important one to consider when buying a perfume. So, if you are testing a perfume, don’t be in a hurry to buy it until the middle notes are activated. That will tell you how you will smell if you wear the perfume.

After wearing the perfume for some hours, you will notice that it is no longer strong. But then, your clothes won’t smell awful because there is still a set of sweet but dull fragrances hanging around. Those fragrances form what is known as the base notes. They are the third and final stage in the deactivation of the perfume’s fragrances. The job of the base notes is to keep you and your clothes fresh until you dab another perfume. If you use a good perfume, the base notes can last for days or weeks. I’m not about months, though.

Now, it’s time to find out the top, middle, and base notes of Chanel No. 5 perfume. It’s time to find out what you will smell like when you wear this perfume.

Chanel’s No. 5 Top Notes

When you open a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle and/or spray it, the fragrances that will first greet you are lemon, bergamot, neroli, peach, ylang-ylang, and aldehydes scents. 

• Lemon will give you a heady, fresh, therapeutic, and energetic fragrance.
• Bergamot will give you a sweet, sunny, tart, and crisp smell.
• Neroli has a sweet, citrusy, floral, honey, bright, and green smell.
• Peach gives off a sweet, fresh, and fruity scent.

Ylang-ylang has a heady, spicy, sweet, and fruity scent. Aldehydes have many smells. Some of them don’t smell so good but the ones that do have a soapy, fresh, and fruity smell.

Chanel No. 5 Middle Notes

    The heart notes of Chanel No. 5 perfume are lily-of-the-valley, iris, rose, jasmine, and orris root.

• Lily-of-the-valley gives the perfume a light, sweet, floral, and fresh flavour.
• Iris adds its powdery, floral, subtle, and buttery scent.
• Rose, the queen of flowers, provides a fresh, green, minty, floral, citrus, sweet, and fruity smell for the perfume.
• Jasmine, the king of flowers, adds a woody, musky, floral, and sweet scent to the combination.
• Orris root provides the peppery and raspberry-like fragrance you will receive from the perfume.

Chanel No. 5 Base Notes

   Here, the perfume gives vanilla, sandalwood, civet, vetiver, amber, patchouli, and musk scents. 

• Vanilla, as we all know, has a seductive, sensual, sweet, warm, creamy, playful, and comforting smell. It always reminds people of ice cream and the bakery.
• Sandalwood has a soft, deep, woody smell. Just think of freshly cut wood and you will have the smell of sandalwood.
• Civet gives a buttery, floral, and velvety scent.
• Vetiver has a smoky, woody, earthy, dry, and leathery smell.
• Amber gives the perfume a warm, sweet, and powdery fragrance.
• Patchouli has a spicy, woody, sweet, and, sometimes, musky scent.
• Musk has a strong intoxicating, animalistic, woody, and earthy scent.

What do people say about Chanel’s No. 5 Perfumes?

You must have seen how great Chanel’s No.5 perfumes are, especially considering the exotic combination of its fragrance. Fans of this perfume love the fragrance and how it embraces them. But, is that all there is to this perfume? Well, a few searches have revealed some users’ objective reviews of the perfume. In this section, we will look at the pros and cons of Chanel’s No. 5 perfumes, based on the users’ commendation and complaints.

The Pros

So, what do people love about Chanel’s No. 5 perfumes? What do they say makes the perfume exceptional that they had to stay with it for long? This is what you are about to find out here.

1. Its fragrance. You would have guessed this by now. The exotic combination of different fragrances gives the perfume its signature. Many users have come out to tell how the perfume’s fragrance makes them feel. In summary, the users said the fragrance smells rich, sophisticated, arrogant (go figure), expensive, beautiful, luxurious, sensual, elegant, strong, assertive, expressive, seductive, suggestive, clean, soft, swift, and fresh.

2. Its longevity. Everyone agrees that the fragrance of Chanel’s No. 5 lasts for a long time on the body and clothes. Some persons said its longevity is eternal. This means the perfume is so good that its heart notes will stay on you for hours, maybe the whole day. And, when the base notes are activated, your clothes are bound to smell the amazing scents from the perfume for weeks.

3. The targeted gender. This is another thing that is amazing about this perfume. Some people state that it is very feminine because it is soft and caressing. Others state that it is bold and arrogant, which is not perfect for the “soft” ladies. In other words, women can use it but it shouldn’t be the “soft” kind of woman. But, some men opt for this perfume. They love it on themselves too. Remember, it has sandalwoods, musk, vetiver, and many other scents you can find in a masculine perfume. So, Chanel’s No. 5 can pass for feminine and unisex perfume. Not sure it can go as a masculine perfume, though.

4. Sillage. A perfume’s sillage refers to its projection and lingering effects. It is the lingering smell your perfume leaves after you left a room or passed a corner. It describes how the perfume follows you around. For instance, if you walk into an office, stay for some minutes and leave, the sillage of your perfume will tell anyone that walks into that room that you were there. From users’ reviews, Chanel’s No. 5 has a strong and enormous sillage. So, the fragrance of the perfume trails you everywhere you go.

The Cons

Painfully, all is not perfect with the No. 5 perfume series. They may have won over a lot of fans but it’s not everyone that thinks the perfume is amazing. Even some of its fans have one or two things they wished the perfume makers could change or address. Well, here are some of them.

1. Its fragrance. Are you surprised to see this here? Well, it’s not everyone that likes the smell of the perfume. Of course, everyone is not bound to like the fragrance but it’s good that you know what they don’t like about it so that, if you don’t like what they found unpleasant, you can forget about buying the perfume for yourself or someone you are sure will also not like what was pointed out.

i. The perfume smells too soapy. Some people say the perfume smells like a laundry room because its soapy scent is too strong. This soapy smell comes from the aldehydes and Coco chose it intentionally to give women the feeling of being clean. But, unfortunately, it’s not everyone that enjoys the smell.

ii. It smells too unnatural. There are some people that don’t like the perfume because it doesn’t smell like any of their homemade perfumes. Some reviewers believe the combination of so many fragrances has caused the perfume to smell like what was produced in a laboratory. Well, if you want to stay closer to nature, and you prefer perfumes made from only one substance, I think Chanel No. 5 is not the right perfume for you.

iii. It is too strong. Many people prefer perfumes with a subtle fragrance that will keep them anonymous in a large room to a strong one that will draw attention to them. These people don’t want heads to turn when they pass or to stop conversations when they enter a room. They don’t want a perfume that is bold, assertive, and expressive. People like this don’t want anything to do with Chanel No. 5. Are you one of them? If yes, No. 5 is not the right perfume for you.

iv. It smells too matured and archaic. This kind of complaint came from young users, especially teenagers and people in their early twenties. Someone said the perfume is best for grandmas. Well, it is not the type of fragrance that every teenager may like. So, think twice if you don’t want to smell “matured” or “old”.

v. The signature is not distinctive. According to the reviewers with this opinion, the sillage of the perfume may be spectacular but the fragrance does not stick to memory. They mean you can smell heavenly all day when you wear this perfume but no one can distinguish its fragrance and say, “Oh my, this must be Chanel No. 5.” They insisted the perfume smells “ordinary” and they won’t blind-buy it. I guess, the signature doesn’t stick after all.

2. The value of money. This perfume doesn’t come cheap. It may not be the most expensive in the market but it is quite expensive. Many users think it is overpriced. According to them, the perfume smells good and has long-lasting longevity, but its price needs to be reviewed. They want to have it at a cheaper rate.

Conclusion

Buying a good perfume is an investment you won’t regret making. You need to smell good all the time, you know, especially when heading for business meetings, dates, social gatherings, or just for a walk in a cool breezy evening. So, you don’t have to look back or think twice whenever you are buying a good perfume. But, you have to make sure the perfume is worth it.

Coming to whether you should invest your money in a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume, I think you should go ahead and do it. From what you can see in this review, the perfume is worth that move. The truth is, the perfume may not be the best choice for everyone but it is definitely not overhyped. In fact, the perfume is not hyped at all. It has everything it says.

But, is the perfume overpriced? Well, I don’t think so. If its longevity is eternal, the sillage enormous, and the fragrance heavenly, then their high prices are worth it. You only need to test the fragrance at a perfume shop to be sure you’ll love what you’re buying. If you do love the fragrance, then pick a bottle; you won’t regret it. Remember, women loved the perfume since 1921 and they still do now. That’s to tell you it’s a good choice.

One more thing, remember to buy the perfume from good vendors so you don’t pick a fake one. You can as well order directly from the house of Chanel if they deliver to your jurisdiction. Information on the perfumes’ prices, sizes, and types can be found when you click on the link on this Chanel No. 5 review page.