Is there anything more sensuous than the little sigh that escapes when you give the atomiser a squeeze? Where perfumes are concerned, the scent itself is only a part of the story

I still have my first bottle of Chanel No 5. The contents are long gone: I was 16 when I was given it and so unaware of how much life’s luxuries cost that I used to spray it all over my pillow (I aspired to be like Marilyn Monroe, who famously claimed to wear nothing but No 5 to bed).

However, the flask has been on my dressing table ever since and when it catches the light in the afternoons, I remember the giddiness of being very, very nearly an adult.

Where perfumes are concerned, the scent itself is only a part of the story. The attachment we form to a particular one, which can last a lifetime, has as much to do with the way it looks as the way it smells. A fragrance that’s packaged clumsily will never win anyone’s heart, no matter how carefully it’s been blended.

‘A perfume is a work of art, and the object that contains it must be a masterpiece,’ declared Robert Ricci, couturier Nina Ricci’s son. He knew what he was talking about — in the late 1940s, when in charge of the house’s perfume arm, he masterminded the launch of a huge Lalique crystal flaçon of L’Air du Temps.

It sold for a sum that, at the time, would have paid for a family home, but Ricci, an astute businessman, knew that its existence would boost the value of the brand immeasurably.

‘It’s so hard to divorce the scent from the bottle,’ agrees Lizzie Ostrom, better known as perfume expert Odette Toilette. ‘When you’re putting something on every morning, the picking up of the bottle and the way it looks and feels in your hand are incredibly important. They’re like fairytale talismans.’

In her book Perfume: A Century of Scents (Hutchinson, £11.99), she shows how fragrances and the containers that house them hold up a mirror to what’s considered thrilling in the era in which they’re launched. Think of Dior’s Eau Sauvage, with its bottle that’s pure 1960s spy-who-loved-me (the tiny raised dots on the metal cap look a bit like a pistol’s grip).

Most everyday objects started out simple and became more complex with every passing century — shoes being a prime example — but not so perfume bottles. From the painted vases the Ancient Greeks used for storing their aromatic skin oils to the hollowed-out gemstones favoured by the Romans, they’ve always been fabulously ornate, a sure-fire way of demonstrating your wealth and good taste.

Some of history’s most beautiful perfume bottles haven’t just been works of art in their own right, they’ve actually appeared in one. The V&A’s collection includes a dazzling, wheel-shaped flaçon with sunbeams of yellow glass radiating from the centre, probably made in Venice in the late 17th or early 18th century. It’s the twin of one depicted in a painting of 1670 by Dutch portraitist Caspar Netscher. The piece shows a woman being waited on by a page, next to a fruit bowl and said perfume bottle; it displays the trappings of a fashionable life, a little like the 2010's Instagram shots of fancy brunches.

What we think of as the ‘classic’ perfume bottle (crystal, twirly gold lettering, a stopper that allows you to dab the contents onto your neck and wrists) really took shape during the first decade of the 20th century, when Art Nouveau was at its height. It was also around then that atomisers (is there anything more sensuous than the little sigh that escapes them when you give the bulb a squeeze?) rose to fame, with the first one going on sale in 1907.

Since then, the design basics have stayed the same. However, for makers, the joy is in playing around with them so that they chime with the fragrance’s identity and that of the person wearing it. Even the immortal bottles (including my beloved Chanel No 5) have been tweaked ever so slightly over the years to move with the times. ‘The good ones do it incredibly subtly, almost so you wouldn’t notice,’ says Lizzie. ‘There’s this sense of continuity.’

Striking a balance between old and new in this way is something that Richard E. Grant knows all about. In 2014, the actor (who has, as he puts it, spent a lifetime obsessively ‘smelling everything in sight’, including the walls at Highclere Castle when he appeared in Downton Abbey) launched a perfume. Jack was the result of two years’ research and he spent almost as long on the packaging as he did its contents.

‘What I wanted was a turn-of-the-last-century-style bottle that was simple, but beautiful,’ he explains. ‘I was imagining a quintessentially British product, hence the pillar-box-red packaging and the vintage Union Flag bag inside that sleeves the perfume.’

All the thought that went into it paid off: Jack did so well that Richard has brought out multiple iterations.

What will our perfume bottles look like in 10, 20 or even 50 years’ time? Personalisation of the bottles, of course, and bespoke scents.

Of course, if this kind of thing takes off, it’ll make it even harder for people who are sentimental about bottles to let them go — and it seems there are more of us than I’d realised.

‘Throwing them away feels like chucking out something really central to the time in my life when I wore that perfume,’ admits Lizzie, who has 400 in her collection. ‘One of my friends actually had so many, she made them into a chandelier. All the bottles were dangling from a lampshade in her sitting room.’

This feature originally appeared in a 2016 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.