Its creation is the stuff of legend. By 1921, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel had already made quite a stir in fashion, having shocked the world by encouraging women to cast off corsets, cut their hair, wear trousers and bare their skin to the sun. If she were to put a perfume to her name, it would be crucial to make that same defining departure from the norm – which is exactly what she and French-Russian chemist Ernest Beaux achieved with CHANEL N°5. 

"For a time, it was seen as scandalous to wear fragrance on your skin, because that announced the bare flesh beneath your modest clothing," explains Suzy Nightingale, fragrance expert, co-host of the On the Scent podcast, and senior writer for The Perfume Society. "Instead, [it was believed] you must dab a delicate rose or bluebell on your handkerchief, or subtly scent the fabric of your dress. [Gabrielle] Chanel cast such societal expectations aside, telling Beaux she wanted him to create 'an artificial fragrance, like a dress, something crafted,' that would 'smell like a woman, not a rose'." 

A manifesto - a dazzling bouquet of jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, patchouli, lily, iris, vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla and amber. And the cleverest element is that not a single note is identifiable due to Beaux's use of aldehydes - a mixture of organic carbon, oxygen and hydrogen compounds, popularised by CHANEL N°5 and now widely used in perfumery to create a sparkling and effervescent quality. 

Encapsulate that magic in a bottle with sharp angles, crystalline transparency and a stopper cut like a diamond and modelled on the Place Vendôme, then name it after Chanel's lucky number (which happened to coincide with the number of the fragrance sample presented to her by Beaux), and a star is born. 

"CHANEL N°5 was perhaps the first example of a scent as an icon," says award-winning fragrance critic Dariush Alavi of Persolaise. "It transcended its smell and became a touchstone in its own right in terms of the totality of its creation - not just its scent, but its bottle, its image and its advertising campaigns."