K-Beauty · Story

BTS's Jungkook Touches a Chanel Fragrance. 28 Countries Sell Out.

BTS's Jungkook appeared in Chanel Beauty's new high-end fragrance campaign, and the featured products, priced at around 684,000 Korean won (roughly $470 USD), are now sold out across 28 countries' official websites. The campaign centers on Chanel's prestige fragrance lines Les Extraits and Les Exclusifs, with Jungkook starring alongside the brand's in-house perfumer Olivier Polge.

By Jae KimAugust 7, 20262 min read
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BTS's Jungkook Touches a Chanel Fragrance. 28 Countries Sell Out.
OMONAR

A single campaign. A 684,000-won price tag. Sold out in 28 countries before most people even knew it launched.

BTS's Jungkook Touches a Chanel Fragrance. 28 Countries Sell Out.

BTS's Jungkook, serving as Chanel Beauty's global ambassador, fronted the brand's high-end fragrance rollout for the Les Extraits de Chanel and Les Exclusifs de Chanel lines, and both collections were wiped from Chanel's official online stores almost immediately after going live. That includes the South Korean site and storefronts across 27 other countries.

BTS's Jungkook Touches a Chanel Fragrance. 28 Countries Sell Out.

Online reactions landed somewhere between impressed and speechless. "You can't get it even if you have the money" was a common refrain. Someone else pointed out that this was basically predictable, Jungkook once turned a fabric softener into a national shortage, so a luxury perfume sellout shouldn't surprise anyone. Fans weren't wrong to see it coming.

The campaign itself is more than a product push. Chanel used it to spotlight the craftsmanship and fragrance heritage behind two of its most prestigious lines. Jungkook moved through several flagship scents, Extrait, 1957, Gardenia, and Comète, conveying the house's aesthetic with what the brand describes as his own distinctive atmosphere. The focus piece was 1957, and Chanel leaned hard into its backstory and the values the house has built around it.

One of the more interesting elements of the project is a digital film featuring Jungkook in conversation with Olivier Polge, Chanel's in-house perfumer. The two discuss the story behind 1957 and Polge's approach to scent, which is either a genuine creative document or a very elegant piece of content marketing, possibly both. Campaign photos and the full film are available on Chanel's official Instagram.

Meanwhile, BTS as a group is having a stretch that makes the Chanel news feel like a footnote. Their fifth studio album Arirang has now charted on the Billboard 200 for 19 consecutive weeks, with multiple tracks also landing on the Hot 100, a sustained commercial performance that goes well beyond a debut-week spike. The group also recently generated an estimated $340 million in economic activity through their U.S. world tour and the accompanying city partnership project "The City."

They've also been vocal about the Grammy Awards' decision to create a new Asian Pop category rather than integrate K-pop artists into existing categories, with BTS and their fanbase ARMY publicly opposing the move as discriminatory. The timing of all this, the luxury sellouts, the chart run, the awards-show pushback, paints a picture of a group that hasn't lost a step.

End of story. The omonar! Desk.

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