N°19 was launched by Chanel in 1970 and composed by Henri Robert, the house’s perfumer. It is the last fragrance Gabrielle Chanel launched and wore: its number recalls her birthday, August 19. A floral-woody-green built on the contrast of galbanum and iris pallida, with rose and neroli, sold as an eau de parfum, an eau de toilette, and a Poudré version.
Victoria (Bois de Jasmin) holds N°19 to be a beauty that needs no praise, where galbanum and iris melt into a leathery base; Angela (Now Smell This) sees in it the ingénue facing the grande dame N°5, a classic rooted in its era.
What critics say
Victoria, Bois de Jasmin
As early as 2006, Victoria wrote that N°19 needs no words of praise, so much does its beauty render them superfluous: its difficult facets, the aggressive verdancy of galbanum and the woody duskiness of iris, are arranged with such harmony that one admires the passage from vibrant green to leathery darkness.
She laments a reformulation that altered the fragrance: in place of the passionate interplay of vetiver and leather subdued by iris, the composition meanders before fading on an attenuated vetiver and musk. She invites readers to judge first by the color, green-beige rather than emerald.
Angela, Now Smell This
In August 2011, Angela set N°19 against N°5: if N°5 is the grande dame with pearls and champagne, N°19 is the ingénue coming back from a ride through the forest, grassy meadows, jasmine and roses, mossy forest floor, and a freshly soaped leather saddle.
She finds it more youthful and grounded than N°5, without being contemporary: like the green florals of its era, a classic firmly rooted in its time, which some will find a little stuffy and angular.
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