Who Made It: Arthur Burnham and the Story of a Discontinued Icon
VI was created by British perfumer Arthur Burnham and released in 1998. It has since been discontinued, and no current production exists — a fact that itself has fed much of the mystery surrounding the name.
Only 173 bottles were ever produced, a scarcity that places VI closer to a private commission than a commercial fragrance line. Some accounts suggest the design took inspiration from the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI, echoing that car's sense of old-world British opulence in scent form — though this detail, like several around VI, sits more comfortably in the realm of well-repeated lore than confirmed fact, and we present it as such.
The Bottle: Crystal, Gold, and a Key Fit for a Vault
Whatever the truth of its formula, few dispute that VI's presentation was extraordinary.
The flacon was fashioned from crystal, its stopper wreathed in diamonds — a detail consistently repeated across collector records. It arrived housed in a box of exotic wood and gold, opened not by hand but by a key of its own: crafted from gold, set with diamonds and rubies.
It is worth noting, for accuracy's sake, that no independent source confirms the crystal house as Baccarat specifically. We describe it here simply as a crystal flacon, since that is what the record actually supports.
Whether the perfume inside justified this architecture is, and has always been, a separate question — one the brand itself seemed to answer by making the packaging, rather than the juice, the centrepiece of the price.
The Scent Itself: What Little We Know
Descriptions of the fragrance are sparser and less independently verified than descriptions of its bottle — itself telling. The composition was described by its makers as combining jasmine, rose from Grasse, and what was called, in the language of the time, "secret natural ingredients from ancient recipes." Beyond this, little concrete olfactory detail survives in the record, and claims of specific rare naturals such as ambergris are not independently confirmed. We have chosen not to repeat them as fact.
What can be said with more confidence is the broader philosophy VI represented — one shared by a small class of ultra-rare fragrances: that the vessel and the scarcity are, themselves, part of the perfume.
The Michael Jackson Legend
No account of VI is complete without mentioning its most repeated association — one that should be understood as legend rather than documented fact.
It is widely claimed that Michael Jackson purchased a small number of bottles when VI was first released in 1998, and that Gianni Vive Sulman had also designed pieces for his wardrobe around the same period. This claim recurs across multiple long-standing perfume-community sources, which lends it some weight as a piece of fragrance folklore — but it should be read as a persistent claim rather than a verified biographical fact about Jackson himself.
Can You Still Buy It Today?
No. Production of VI ended some time ago, and the perfume is formally discontinued. With only 173 bottles ever made, an original, unopened flacon would today exist purely on the private collector's market — through estate sales, specialist auction houses, or connections within the rarefied world of vintage perfume collecting. No official retailer currently lists it. If you encounter a "VI by Gianni Vive Sulman" offer online at a modern retail price, treat it as either a fragrance-recreation ("type") product — several of which exist and clearly market themselves as reinterpretations, not the original — or approach the listing with real caution.
Where VI Stands Among the World's Most Expensive Perfumes
To place VI properly, one must see it alongside the handful of fragrances that have, at various points, claimed the title of the world's most expensive perfume.
Perfume | Price | Bottle Size | Price per ml | Defining Feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Shumukh by Nabeel | $1.29 million | 2,580ml | ~$500 | Guinness World Record holder; over six feet tall |
DKNY Golden Delicious | $1 million | 50ml | $20,000 | 2,909 precious stones; only one bottle made |
Clive Christian No. 1 Imperial Majesté | $215,000 | 500ml | $430 | Royal warrant heritage; aged sandalwood and musk |
Parfum VI by Gianni Vive Sulman | $89,000 | 200ml | $445 | Diamond-wreathed stopper; only 173 bottles made |
Clive Christian No. 1 Passant Guardant | $228,000 | 30ml | $7,600 | Ultra-small edition of a heritage house |
Seen this way, VI does not compete on scale — it was never the single most expensive fragrance in absolute terms, as some accounts have claimed. Its distinction lies elsewhere: in its extreme scarcity, its now-vanished production, and the near-mythic status a discontinued, 173-bottle fragrance naturally accumulates once it can no longer be bought at any price. That, arguably, is a rarer kind of luxury than a headline number — one earned by absence rather than announcement.
This article has been updated to correct a previously reported price of $189,000, which could not be verified and has been replaced with the figure supported by independent historical sources.