When it comes to the fragrance industry, the bottle is everything. Currently, two of fashion's biggest powerhouses, Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel, are demonstrating the importance of packaging with their drastically different approaches to limited-edition scents.

For a special series of L'Homme, a floral and spicy cologne, YSL recently commissioned world-renowned architect Jean Nouvel to design the bottle. Nouvel, the first architect to venture into the world of fragrance, says that the bottle represents "masculinity, luxury and preciousness." Its tubular design is enough to give Freud that knowing smile. Indeed, Nouvel says he wanted "a clear-cut shape, so it would easily fit a man's hand while still stimulating many different aspects of his imagination."

While YSL's bottle is eye catching, if not a tad bit impish, Chanel is taking the polar opposite approach for its Les Exclusifs de CHANEL, a small collection of rare scents. Chanel is adding Sycomore, a bold and straightforward woody fragrance, to the 10 other bottles in the collection. The plain design is said to represent the scent's purity and the brand's simple luxury. Jacques Polge, the "Master Perfumer" for the House, describes Sycomore as "something without ambiguity."

Ambiguous or not, both smell handsome to me. --CHLOE KAMARCK

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