CHANEL No. 5 is 100 years old

Gabrielle Chanel meant a lot to women. She probably wouldn't have labeled it herself, but she gave our emancipated state a huge push forward. She literally took the pants, sat on a horse like men, started her own business, created the chain for handbags so you could keep your hands free for a cigarette and a glass, and made tanning fashionable again. Something we really need to reverse now, but that's beside the point. Gabrielle couldn't have known that.

Gabrielle believed that women should smell like women and not like a flower, and therefore commissioned perfumer Ernest Beaux to develop a perfume that would portray women powerfully.

He created two perfume lines that he numbered. The first from 1 to 5, the other from 20 to 24. Superstitious as Gabrielle Chanel was, she chose the fifth (because she liked it the most) and launched it on the fifth day of the fifth month. And the rest, well, you know that story. It is the best-selling, most iconic perfume in the world. With a bottle shaped like the Place Vendôme. Whoever has a birthday treats, so I received this phenomenally beautiful package. Dear No. 5, congratulations. Long may you live.