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Gabrielle Chanel, the legendary French fashion designer and ‘couturière’, known as Coco Chanel, was a woman far ahead of her time. She was a dressmaker, a hat stylist, a designer and businesswoman, managing her stores, extravagantly driving her blue Rolls Royce, she was also a spy in the service of the Germans during World War II, lived in the mythical and luxurious Ritz Hotel in Paris, a lady in French high society and the secret lover of powerful men. In 1921, she created a perfume that, more than 100 years later, is still considered the World’s most iconic fragrance. A true myth! Marilyn Monroe once said that she wore a drop of Chanel No. 5 to bed and nothing else. Andy Warhol, the king of pop art, created nine colorful paintings of the unmistakable perfume bottle, which are on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These facts are a testament to the importance and mythical character of this perfume.
Gabrielle Chanel, a woman of humble, rural origin, was sent to a convent to be educated by nuns when her mother died. From those teenage years, she used to say that the main olfactory memory was the fresh smell of soap in the bathwater.
In the early 1920s, the big trend among fashion houses was to create their own perfume for loyal customers. Gabrielle decided to do this and thought of the fresh scent of the soap from her youth.
In the summer of 1920, Gabrielle CHANEL went on vacation to the French Riviera with her lover, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. There she met Ernest Beaux, a perfumer with a sophisticated personality, who had worked for the Russian Royal Family. The challenge was set for Beaux to create a different perfume, and in the spring of 1921, after several months of work, Beaux presented 10 samples numbered 1 to 5 and 20 to 24. After smelling them, Gabrielle chose number 5, without hesitation.
The Secret of Chanel No. 5
Rumor has it that sample No. 5 is the result of a laboratory error, as Beaux's assistant carelessly added an excessive dose of aldehyde, a chemical ingredient used in perfumery, and one of its versions smells like soap.
The French designer then stated: "This is exactly the perfume I was looking for. The fragrance of the emancipated woman." It was the scent that symbolized the balance between the smell of her adolescence in the convent and the luxurious adult life of a lover of powerful men.
CHANEL No. 5 is a perfume with a strong character, made in laboratory with a exquisite blend of 80 aromas and about 1000 different flowers, grown in the south of France, in the Grasse region, the World Capital of Perfumery.
Gabrielle Chanel was a bold and visionary woman. She secretly planned a marketing ploy. To celebrate having found the perfume she so desired, she invited the Grand Duke, her lover, the perfumer Ernest Beaux, and a group of friends to lunch at an elegant restaurant on the French Riviera. Then, with a vaporizer bottle of CHANEL Nº5, she subtly perfumed the room around the lunch table. All the ladies who passed by would go to the table and ask what that enigmatic, fabulous perfume was. That was the exact moment when Coco CHANEL was certain that she had created a revolutionary perfume and that it would be a great success. A unique moment in the history of perfumery.
But Gabrielle could never have imagined that this scent would celebrate more than a century of outstanding success.
One hundred years as an object of desire!
Congratulations, CHANEL Nº5.
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