Fashion

Bottled up: Memories of Chanel No. 5

Bernadette Morra embraces Chanel’s fragrant history, and her own, while taking a walk down memory’s rose-strewn path.

The loss of a parent reverberates in so many unexpected ways that I have often wondered, since my mother died last year, whether I would ever find closure. At a minimum, I would like to be able to walk into her bedroom and stare at her plump, pink pillow and not reel.

With this in mind, I boarded a plane for Grasse, and the fields of Provence that yield the roses for Chanel No. 5.

That heady floral fragrance was my mother’s favourite. What we didn’t know was that she had held on to her empty bottles—a result of growing up during the Depression, I suppose. My sister discovered my mother’s perfume drawer when she was going through her things, and in it were many used-up bottles of Chanel No. 5.

First published in FASHION Magazine September 2010

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