Gabrielle Chanel was the house's first new women's fragrance pillar in about fifteen years, and the first major creation of Olivier Polge, who succeeded his father Jacques Polge as Chanel's in-house perfumer. Named after the founder's birth name, it was meant to evoke the young, determined Gabrielle before she became 'Coco'. Polge said he noticed in the archives that although flowers run through all Chanel fragrances, the house had never made a fully floral one, so he built a luminous white-floral bouquet around four flowers: jasmine, ylang-ylang, orange blossom and tuberose.
The bottle took about five years to develop. Unlike the house's traditionally heavy glass, it has very thin walls so that light passes through the golden juice, a square silhouette in the line of N°5, a base pushed flat and angular rather than curved inwards, and a matte stopper inspired by lamé couture fabrics.
Kristen Stewart, a Chanel ambassador since 2013, was named the face in May 2017; the film was directed by Ringan Ledwidge and the print campaign shot by Karim Sadli. The scent was presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in July 2017 after the couture show and went on sale that September.