The days between August and October carry the scent of a summer about to end. A sweet, melancholic, narcotic, sunlit fragrance – just like that of jasmine. For this reason, there is no better place to bid farewell to the last summer months than the Chanel fields in Grasse, where jasmine unfurls its fragile blossoms in the slanted light of the season’s end. In this unique land, refreshed by the wind and warmed by the Mediterranean sun, cradle of French perfumery, a three-century-long tradition renews itself every year: cultivating perfume plants with care and savoir-faire, to achieve exceptional results.
Today, nearly a century later, Chanel continues to source from Grasse, and since 1987 has actively contributed to safeguarding the cultivation of jasmine. Alongside it come May rose, iris, geranium, and tuberose: five exclusive harvests, reserved for the olfactory creations of the Maison.
I. GETTING READY
Upon arrival, we are enveloped by the fragrance. With excitement, we put on our boots, stepping into the country house. The soil, warmed by the Mediterranean sun and caressed by a gentle wind, nurtures a biodiversity cultivated with rigor.
It is right here that the story of N°5 begins, today a symbol of timeless elegance. But in 1921, it was a revolution: a perfume conceived like a piece of haute couture. At a time when fragrances imitated a single flower, Gabrielle Chanel and perfumer Ernest Beaux imagined a complex composition, with over eighty raw materials – both natural and synthetic – dominated by an overdose of aldehydes. An opulent, clean, ultra-modern accord. As for the name, Mademoiselle did not choose a poetic word, but her lucky number: five.
Five also are the stages of this journey, lived alongside five exceptional talents – Nicky Passarella, Martina Socrate, Ambra Cotti, Mattia Basso, Matteo Robert.
With them, we immersed ourselves in a sensory path that revealed the gestures, faces, and landscapes behind the jasmine harvest.
So it begins.
II. THE HARVEST
“Every flower is a season,” says Joseph Mul, whose family has cultivated these fields for five generations. His voice is that of experience, his presence a passing of the torch between past and future.
In 1987, from the encounter between his family and Jacques Polge, began the collaboration between Chanel and the Mul family: a story of trust, and an unprecedented alliance between fine perfumery and sustainable agriculture.
Since then, the Maison ensures continuity and olfactory quality by investing directly in the land, protecting it with organic methods, constant analysis, and targeted irrigation techniques.
At the heart of the fields, a factory built in 1988 makes it possible to transform fresh flowers into precious essences just hours after the harvest.
The harvest is a choreographed gesture, swift and delicate.
The raw material – alive, fragile, intoxicatingly fragrant – is treated with absolute respect.
And here, among the fields, the emotion grows stronger, carried by the heady fragrance of jasmine and the thrill of discovering something new, unique, as only the Maison can offer.
III. RENDEZ-VOUS WITH OLIVIER POLGE
In the quiet of the country house, standing against a timeless horizon, we meet Olivier Polge, the Parfumeur Créateur of the Maison and son of Jacques, from whom he inherited the historic alliance with the Mul family.
The passing of the torch between father and son was more than a professional legacy: Jacques Polge left Olivier the keys to a magical and precious perfumed universe, and today it is he who carries on this heritage, transforming savoir-faire and fragrant petals into essences that speak to the present.
It is Olivier who tells us how Chanel fragrances are born: from an abstract idea, a sensation, a living material that carries the memory of places. From rose to geranium, from iris to tuberose, and finally to jasmine, each flower has a character, an emotional weight, a specific narrative role.
Here he takes us on an olfactory journey that begins in the fields and ends in the bottle: he shows us how, over the years, he has developed new compositions while always remaining faithful to the spirit of the Maison.
His favorite N°5? The one first imagined by Gabrielle: the Essence, with its refined gesture, that act of placing the stopper on the warm points of the body to release the fragrance. And then the Eau, the reinterpretation he himself signed: luminous and transparent, like a drop of water.
IV. THE EXTRACTION
The perfume cycle culminates here: in extraction. Jasmine, emblematic flower of Grasse, is harvested before the sun reaches its zenith, from August to October.
The processing of these fragile blossoms begins within hours: weighing, transfer into metal baskets, soaking in hot solvents.
Once the solvent has evaporated, the flowers release all their olfactory power into a highly aromatic wax, the concrète. From 350 kg of flowers, only 1 kg of concrète is obtained.
From here, according to the orders received by the Chanel Parfums laboratory, the alcohol is separated from the scented substance to obtain the absolute, an extremely concentrated liquid used in the formulas of Chanel N°5 Extrait – the purest essence of the flower, destined for the noblest formulas.
This process, controlled at every stage, guarantees complete traceability and olfactory consistency: it is the short supply chain of high-end perfumery. A unique and rare value, all the more precious because invisible.
V. THE MEMORY
Just time for one last glance, suspended between the green of the fields and the blue of the sky, and the moment of farewell arrives.
But the memory of this journey is forever, just like the awareness that perfume is an infallible weapon…
…always within reach to tell our story, express our individuality, and celebrate the tales that move us.
Like those of Grasse.
Like those of CHANEL.
Photos by Johnny Carrano.
Thanks to Chanel Beauty.
What do you think?