Perfume and cologne were originally invented back in times where bathing daily, or weekly (maybe even monthly?), was not an option due to a variety of circumstances. So we started spraying ourselves with fragrances to mask our body odor and give off the image that in fact we were really clean, when that was not the case. The origins of perfume and the art of perfume making can be traced all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Since then, perfume and cologne (honestly cologne is just a fancy name for mens perfume, that isn’t perfume) companies have flourished and it is an extremely profitable industry as it is often not that expensive to produce a bottle, yet they are sold at high prices (this can be said for nearly all of the cosmetic industry as well). However how much is too much? Well British designer Clive Christian of high-end perfume and luxury kitchens (oddly enough), may provide you with an answer.
Clive Christian was born in 1951 in Scotland, however he grew up in England. He gained an interest into high-end designing of interiors and kitchens where he saw a large amount of success. In 1999 he acquire Crown Perfumery which was a legendary perfume house that has been in operation since 1872. After breaking into the fragrance industry, he decided that he would like to create the worlds most expensive perfume/cologne. Clive Christian No. 1 was unveiled in 2001 and in 2006 it was named by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the most expensive cologne costing around $2,150 dollars per ounce. This fragrance is produced in limited amounts each year, and Clive Christian has released a number of limited edition bottles that make the fragrance even more expensive. The top notes of the fragrance are bergamot, lime, Sicilian mandarin, cardamom, nutmeg, and thyme while the heart notes are of lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, and heliotrope. The No. 1 also has base notes of cedarwood, sandalwood, vetiver, ambery woods, and vanilla. The combination of these scents make the Clive Christian No. 1 truly complex and unique.You can get a small bottle of the fragrance in the normal packaging at Neiman Markus for $865 dollars, however there is the “slightly” more expensive version: The No. 1 Passant Guardant.
The No. 1 Passant Guardant (pictured above) is essentially the Clive Christian No. 1 fragrance in a limited edition bottle and at around $229,000 per bottle the word “limited” takes on a new meaning. Clive Christian created this bottle to celebrate the opening of the first fragrance boutique in Harrods in London, and that is the only place that you can get it. Christian took the signature crystal bottle of the No. 1 and put handcrafted 24 carat gold lattice-work all over it. Additionally there are over 2,000 diamonds located all over the bottle. Some of these diamonds are organized to form a lion with its eyes made of rare yellow diamonds and its tongue made from a rare pink diamond. The bottle holds 30ml of the fragrance.
Photo from clive.com
