My Chanel no 5 Journey

 It's a well known fact that I do love Chanel no 5. The first bottle that I had purchased was the extrait version around 10 or 12 years ago and promptly drained or my mother nicked it. Then I got a 50ml bottle of the EDP that is about two thirds empty.

Before I got serious about perfume, there was a time that I tried the no 5 hand lotion at a department store and I promptly hated it. I don't recall exactly why I hated it but I honestly think that the lotion might have been improperly stored and had gone rancid or I was trying the wrong no 5. But when I had bought my first extrait bottle, it was $95 for a quarter ounce bottle. But the first version on no 5 that I really understood was Eau Premiere when I tried it at a department store and bought a bottle. But when I arrived home, I realized that I had bought the Sensual Elixer, which has been discontinued for years. But I ordered a bottle of Eau Premiere a couple days later.

So fast forward at least a decade and how many bottles of perfume later, I have tons of Chanel no 5. The only no 5 that isn't in my stable is the L'Eau version because it has no resemblance to any other version of no 5. But when I finished that bottle of no 5 edt, I kind of took a little bit of a break but opened a brand new bottle of the edt and almost physically recoiled. Chanel has messed with the edt version. I knew that the edp version was messed with and kind of liked it. But after wearing my first bottle of no 5 edp, I am pretty annoyed with Chanel at this point. Because no 5 isn't something that I exactly recognize anymore. No 5 has been reformulated. Reformulations do happen but not to this extreme. I can't comment about the extrait being reformulated because I don't have any older bottles to compare it to. But the luminous nature of the edt isn't there and the sharpness of the edp isn't there. So it looks like I am going to be sticking to Eau Premiere for a very long time. 

I will admit that I would love to have another bottle of the extrait version of no 5 but the prices of Chanel have gotten to the point of being ridiculous. To the point of I can't exactly justify buying any of Chanel perfumes. Out of all of the no 5 offerings, Ulta doesn't carry the extrait version of no 5 and I have almost enough points that I would get a quarter ounce bottle. But things haven't worked out that way at Ulta.