The Secret of Chanel No. 5

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  14 One of the earliest aldehydes discovered, cinnamaldehyde: For details on aldehydes, my thanks to Ron Winnegrad and Subha Patel at International Flavors and Fragrances and to conservator Elizabeth Morse.

  15 adding aldehydes to the rich scents of florals is very much like what happens when a cook drizzles fresh lemon over strawberries: Jacques Polge, Chanel, interview, 2009.

  16 Chemists will also argue that aldehydes have the effect of stimulating what is known as the trigeminal nerve: Luca Turin, interview, 2009; see also Ron S. Jackson, Wine Tasting: A Professional Handbook (San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press, 2002), 52; E. Joy Bowles, The Chemistry of Aromatherapeutic Oils (Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin Academic, 2004), 148; Hirokazu Tsubone and Meiji Kawata, “Stimulation to the Trigeminal Afferent Nerve of the Nose by Formaldehyde, Acrolein, and Acetaldehyde Gases,” Inhalation Toxicology 3, no. 2 (1991): 211–22.

  17 “most aromatic compounds can [also] stimulate trigeminal nerve fibers”: Jackson, Wine Tasting, 52.

  18 There at the northern reaches of the world, stationed along the Polar Circle: See K. Sieg, E. Starokozhev, E. Fries, S. Sala, and W. Püttmann, “N-Aldehydes (C6-C10) in Snow Samples Collected at the High Alpine Research Station Jungfraujoch during CLACE 5,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 9 (2009), 8071–99, www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/8071/2009; and “Atmospheric Chemicals Seen in a New Light,” CNN, March 23, 1999.

  19 “I finally captured it, but not without effort, because the first aldehydes that I was able to find were unstable and unreliably manufactured”: Beaux, “Souvenirs.”

  20 Constantin Weriguine, later remembered: a “winter melting note”: Constantin Weriguine, Souvenirs et Parfums: Mémoires d’un Parfumeur (Paris: Plon, 1965); Weriguine notes that Ernest Beaux was working with the memory of what the Russians call chernozem (“black soil”), a humus-rich soil scent, to capture the idea of melting snow in the spring, 162.

  21 He warned Coco Chanel that a perfume with this much jasmine would be fabulously expensive: According to Pierre Galante, Les années Chanel, 85, Ernest Beaux told her, “There are in this bottle more than twenty ingredients. This perfume will be expensive.” She asked, “Ah, what is it that’s so expensive in there?” “The jasmine,” he told her. “Nothing is more expensive than jasmine.” To which she replied, “Ah, good! Use more. I want to make the most expensive perfume in the world.”

  22 “was the first fragrance to make use of synthetically replicated molecules taken from products of natural origin called aldehydes”: Susannah Frankel, “The Chanel No. 5 Story,” The Independent, October 15, 2008, www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-chanel-no-5-story-961226.html; Nigel Groom, The New Perfume Handbook (London: Chapman and Hall, 1997), 61, also calls it “The first of the aldehyde perfumes.” Kate Shapland, “Chanel No. 5: Enduring Love,” The Telegraph, May 7, 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/labels/chanel/5285472/Chanel-No-5-enduring-love.html, credits it with being “the world of scent’s first abstract olfactory creation.” None of these statements is entirely correct.

  23 Even Robert Bienaimé's groundbreaking scent Quelques Fleurs–which used one of the so-called C-12 aldehydes: See Kraft, Ledard, and Goutell, “From Rallet No. 1 to Chanel No. 5.”

  24 Pierre Armingeat and Georges Darzens’s Reve d’Or (1905) and Floramye (1905) claim the honors: Bernard Chant, “The Challenge of Creativity,” Newsletter of the British Society of Perfumers, 1983, www.bsp.org.uk/newsarc/creat.html; see also the excellent discussion by perfume historian and blogger Elena Vosnaki, “Myth Debunking 1: What Are Aldehydes, How Do Aldehydes Smell and Chanel No. 5,” Perfume Shrine, December 2, 2008, http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/2008/12/myth-debunking-1-what-are-aldehydes-how.html. Some sources date Floramye to as early as 1895 or 1903, but the evidence is not conclusive. The sources claiming that Reve d’Or dates to 1925 have likely confused the original launch of the perfume with its relaunch in 1925. See Christie Mayer Lefkowith, The Art of Perfume (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994).

  25 “it is the aldehyde note that, since the creation of Chanel No. 5, has more than anything else influenced new perfume compositions”: Beaux, “Souvenirs.”

  26 “When did I invent it? In 1920 precisely. After my return from the war”: Ibid.

  27 As Edmonde Charles-Roux, tells it: “the development of No. 5 … proceeded in a rather heavy atmosphere …”: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 202.

  28 named not after the number of the fragrance vial but after the number of “a station in Coty’s laboratory at either Suresnes or at the Rallet factory in the south of France”: Toledano and Coty, François Coty, 86.

  29 François Coty’s massive perfume company had swallowed up yet another of his smaller competitors: Kraft, Ledard, and Goutell, “From Rallet No. 1 to Chanel No. 5,” 39; see also Toledano and Coty, François Coty, 56.

  30 They were based on a previous formula: See Kraft, Ledard, and Goutell, “From Rallet No. 1 to Chanel No. 5"; on the basis of GCMS analysis of samples and archival research, the authors demonstrate the relationship among Le Bouquet de Catherine / Rallet No. 1, Chanel No. 5, Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1, and other fragrances, including Quelques Fleurs.

  31 adding to the blend, for example, his own rose-scent invention, “Rose E.B.,” and the mixed notes of a jasmine field: Private correspondence, Philip Kraft, 2009; see also the excellent entry on Chanel No. 5 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanel_No._5, and the (purported) early Chanel No. 5 cologne formulae available online at http://asylum.zensoaps.com/index.php?showtopic=6800.

  1 wondered aloud, “What was that fragrance?” “The effect,” she later said, “was amazing”: Galante, Les années Chanel, 85; the version is somewhat different in Madsen, Chanel, 134.

  2 we have perfumed ourselves with a remarkably small and consistent number of fragrances, perhaps only a hundred: See Milinski and Wedekind, “Evidence for MHC-Correlated Perfume Preferences,” 147; the authors estimate 100,000 scents in the world and claim that even the most average untrained human nose can recognize upward of ten thousand.

  3 “we are as strongly attracted to roses and violets as any bee”: Watson, Jacobson’s Organ, 158.

  4 “In the lily of the valley they sell on the 1st of May, I can smell the hands of the kid who picked it”: Baillén, Chanel Solitaire, 86; Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 67.

  5 “share the same peculiar chemical architecture, carrying ten atoms of carbon and sixteen atoms of hydrogen in every molecule”: Watson, Jacobson’s Organ, 165.

  6 As Lyall Watson writes in her book Jacobson’s Organ, however, “it does these magical fragrances no favour to reduce them to esthers and aldehydes”: Watson, Jacobson’s Organ, 165.

  7 Flowers are, after all, the essential machinery of a plant’s reproductive organs, and perfumes are often made from their sexual secretions: Watson, Jacobson’s Organ, 157. On the difference between storax and styrax, below, see The New Perfume Handbook.

  8 “many classical ingredients of natural origins [in perfume-making are] reminiscent of human body odors”: Milinski and Wedekind, “Evidence for MHC-Correlated Perfume Preferences,” 148. This works, of course, at the level of minute sub-scents. The scent of a jasmine flower, for example, is made up of hundreds of different molecules, and the smell of a rose is made up of as many as a thousand. Of those thousand molecules, only a handful give the plant the aroma we recognize as a rose smell. All those other hundreds of molecules give a particular rose blossom the qualities that make it unique, and they create a set of sub-scents that operate, more often than not, somewhere below the threshold of our conscious recognition of them. As Milinski and Wedekind put it, while “the scents of … rose and jasmine apparently differ. … a natural flower oil may contain over 400 different odorants … [and] many classical ingredients of natural origins [are] reminiscent of human body odors. … It may be because of their subscents that specific species have a long tradition of being used for perfumes,” 148; see also discussions in Chandler Burr, The Emperor of Scent: A Story of
Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses (New York: Random House, 2003), 130; and Rachel Herz, The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (New York: William Morrow, 2007), 18.

  9 poet John Donne wrote about the “sweet sweat of roses”: John Donne, “The Comparison” (elegy 8, line 1), in John Donne, The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (New York: Penguin, 1971).

  10 indoles are the smell of something sweet and fleshy and just a little bit dirty: See Drobnick, The Smell Culture Reader, 214; jasmine, orange blossom, honeysuckle, tuberose, and ylang-ylang are flowers that, chemically speaking, have particularly high proportions of indoles. Other organic compounds with these same materials and sub-notes include sweat, feces, and rotting bodies.

  11 “several ingredients of incenses resembl[e] scents of the human body”: Lyall Watson writes, “the most interesting feature of incense … is that it comes from five principal sources: myrrh, frankincense, laudanum [i.e., labdanum], galbanus and styrax [or storax] … [and all] contain resin alcohols, called phytosterols, which biochemically are remarkably similar to human hormones,” especially those found in our saliva, sweat, and urine, Jacobson’s Organ, 152; see also “To Attract a Woman by Wearing Scent, a Man Must First Attract Himself,” The Economist, December 8, 2008, 136.

  12 When the perfumer Paul Jellinek was writing what is still the standard textbook on the science of fragrance chemistry: Paul Jellinek and Robert R. Calkin, Perfumery: Practice and Principles (Oxford: Wiley Interscience, 1993); cited in Watson, Jacobson’s Organ, 153.

  13 When Coty was trying to convince a certain Henri de Villemessant, the man in charge of Paris’s chic department store Les Grands Magasins: Toledano and Coty, François Coty, 64.

  14 Having established No. 5's appeal, she returned to the idea of giving these samples of the scent to her most loyal clients as holiday gifts: Details of the perfume’s launch, here and below, from various sources, including Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 76; Madsen, Chanel, 135.

  1 She and Molyneux also shared a certain sense of chaste minimalism: On Molyneux as a designer, see Decades of Fashion (Potsdam, Germany: H. F. Ulmann, 2008).

  2 As Luca Turin writes: “[Edward Molyneux’s] Numéro Cinq is surpassingly beautiful and strange”: Luca Turin, “Cinq Bis,” NZZ Folio: Die Zeitschrift der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, February 2008, www.nzzfolio.ch/www/d80bd71b-b264-4db4-afd0-277884b93470/showarticle/ee2a4e74-3cd7-4b81-86da-93db1de6f257.aspx; see also Perfume Intelligence, www.perfumeintelligence.co.uk/library/perfume/m/houses/Moly.htm. Lefkowith suggests the later date and proposes that Molyneux number three fragrance was named after the address of Maxim’s in Paris; see The Art of Perfume, 200.

  According to archival records at Guerlain, Shalimar was actually invented–and briefly launched–in 1921, the same year as Chanel No. 5 and, perhaps, as Molyneux’s Numéro Cinq. When socialites in New York City became enamoured of the fragrance worn by Guerlain’s wife, Shalimar was relaunched in 1925, with phenomenal success.

  3 as Misia Sert put it, “success beyond anything we could have imagined … the hen laying golden eggs”: Madsen, Chanel, 135.

  4 Chanel No. 5, Beaux remembered, “was already a remarkable success”: Beaux went on to say in his “Souvenirs” that “ … it was the time of the Conférence de Cannes and the factory at La Bocca was the kind of thing that attracted distinguished visitors, who came curious to see my laboratory and the large installations in the soap factory. I had visits from Briand, Loucheur, Lloyd George, and lots of others. The great caricaturist Sem, he also came one day and after having smelled a number of laboratory trials and finished perfumes–he regarded me for an instant–and dubbed me Minister of the Nose.”

  5 legendary land of Cockaigne (in French the pays de Cocagne), the mythical land of luxury and ease: See Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne, trans. Diane Webb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

  6 “Suffering makes people better, not pleasure …”: Baillén, Chanel Solitaire, 146.

  7 As neuroscientist Rachel Herz writes in her book The Scent of Desire, “the areas … “: Herz, Scent of Desire, 3.

  8 The Wertheimers had made their fortunes at Bourjois selling perfumes and cosmetics manufactured for the theater and vaudeville stage: Details here and following drawn from various sources, including the various biographies of Coco Chanel and from Bruno Abescat and Yves Stavridès, “Derrière l’Empire Chanel … la Fabuleuse Histoire des Wertheimer,” L’Express, April 7, 2005, 16–30; July 11, 2005, 84–88; July 18, 2005, 82–86; July 25, 2005, 76–80; August 1, 2005, 74–78; August 8, 2005, 80–84, part 1, 29.

  9 Within just a few years, magazines would begin encouraging women to “analyz[e] one’s own personality to discover ‘its’ style”: Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 6.

  10 who took pleasure in swallowing up the smaller companies with whom he partnered was already well known: See Toledano and Coty, François Coty, 87; the classic example is the exchange between Coty and Paul Poiret. Coty came to Poiret announcing he was there to buy his business. When Poiret told him it wasn’t for sale, Coty said, “You will take fifteen years before you reach any great importance. If you come with me, you will profit from my management, and in two years you will be worth as much as I am.” Poiret replied, “But in two years my business would be yours, while in the contrary case, in fifteen years it would still be my own property.” As it turned out, fifteen years later Poiret was bankrupt.

  11 She wanted to keep “her association with the Wertheimers … at arm’s length”: Madsen, Chanel, 129.

  12 “her fear of losing control over her fashion house made her sign away the perfume for ten percent of the corporation”: Ibid.

  13 Coco Chanel told them, “Form a company if you like, but I am not interested in getting involved in your business”: Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 146.

  14 contract read: “Mademoiselle Chanel, dress designer … all perfumery products, makeups, soaps, etc.”: Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 147.

  15 Chanel “only first-class products” that she deemed sufficiently luxurious: Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 148.

  16 by 1922 he had broken ties with the company and moved to Charabot, a company specializing in perfume materials: Biographical details on Ernest Beaux are generally scanty. See Gilberte Beaux, Une femme libre (Paris: Fayard, 2006). He is also mentioned in passing during the First World War in Rasskavov, Notes of a Prisoner, 1935.

  1 American women had, in the words of one historian, “the greatest value of surplus [money] ever given to women to spend in all of history”: Berry, Screen Style, 2.

  2 “Luxury perfume,” the brochure reads, “this term …”: Catalog, 1924, Chanel archives.

  3 Coco Chanel shopped there herself on occasion: See François Chaille, The Book of Ties (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 119.

  4 Her real model was one of Boy Capel’s whisky decanters: Chanel archives.

  5 No. 5 bottle as “solemn, ultra-simple, quasi-pharmaceutical”: Madsen, Chanel, 133.

  6 Already “the art of the bottle tend[ing] … to simplicity of lines and decoration”: Fontan, Générations Bourjois, 78.

  7 The 1907 Lalique bottle for François Coty’s La Rose Jacqueminot (1903): See the image, for example, in Morris, Fragrance, 200. Some sources date the release of Coty’s blockbuster to 1904, e.g., Michael Edwards, Perfume Legends, 290.

  8 At least as early as 1920, Bourjois’s bottle for its Ashes of Roses (1909): See, for example, the image in Fontan, Générations Bourjois, 78.

  9 The innovations that directly led to the bottle we know today only happened in 1924: Chanel archives.

  10 Place Vendôme, the original flask didn’t yet have that familiar faceted large stopper: Chanel archives notes that there is no evidence of any direct connection; Coco Chanel admired octagonal shapes in general and often used them in her designs.

  11 experts have uncovered at least one rare example of Rall
et No. 1: See essay and photography by Philip Goutell, “Le No. 1,” Perfume Projects, www.perfume projects.com/museum/bottles/Rallet_No1.shtml.

  12 and, when not in the standard parfum concentration, it included the strength in eau de toilette or eau de cologne–two other early: Chanel archives; according to archivists, the parfum, eau de toilette, and eau de cologne concentrations were introduced in 1924–25, the eau de parfum in the 1950s, and a powder in 1986. Generally, perfumes come in four different “strengths,” and sometimes–as in the case of Chanel No. 5–those different strengths are actually different formulas. All perfumes are dissolved in a neutral base, usually an odorless alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water, and the different terms signal to a consumer what percentage of the final product is aromatic material. The most concentrated version of the scent is the parfum version, often known as the extrait or extract, which can be anywhere from 15 to 40 percent pure scent, and therefore 60 to 85 percent neutral. This is the kind of perfume that almost always comes only in the small dropper bottles, and its aroma is very concentrated. Eau de parfum, however, is often available as a spray, and it typically has 10 to 20 percent aromatics. Obviously, those ballpark numbers mean the percentages across the industry aren’t standard. Eau de toilette is generally 5 to 15 percent scented material, while eau de cologne is reserved for scent concentrations that are usually less than 5 percent aromatic and, for historical reasons, are typically light and fruity.