Coco Chanel had
wanted to develop a distinctly modern fragrance for some time by
early 1920. At this time, Chanel's lover was Grand Duke Dmitri
Pavlovich Romanov of Russia, the murderer of Rasputin. The duke
introduced her to Ernest Beaux on the French Riviera. Beaux was the
master perfumer at A. Rallet and Company, where he had been employed
since 1898. The company was the official perfumer to the Russian
royal family, and "the imperial palace at St. Petersburg was a
famously perfumed court."The favorite scent of the Czarina
Alexandra, composed specifically for her by Rallet in Moscow, had
been an eau de cologne opulent with rose and jasmine named Rallet
O-DE-KOLON No.1 Vesovoi.
In 1912, Beaux
created a men's eau de cologne, Le Bouquet de Napoleon, to
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, a
decisive battle in the Napoleonic Wars. The success of this men's
fragrance inspired Beaux to create a feminine counterpart, whose
jumping off point was the chemical composition of aldehydic
multiflores in Houbigant's immensely popular Quelques Fleurs (1912).
His experiments with
the aldehydes in Quelques Fleurs, resulted in a fragrance that he
called Le Bouquet de Catherine. He intended to use the scent to
inaugurate another celebration in 1913, the 300th anniversary of the
Romanoff dynasty. The debut of this new perfume proved ill-timed
commercially. World War I was approaching, and the czarina and the
perfume's namesake, the Empress Catherine, had both been German-born.
A marketing misfortune that invoked unpopular associations, combined
with the fact that Le Bouquet de Catherine was enormously expensive,
made it a commercial failure. An attempt to re-brand the perfume, as
Rallet No. 1 was unsuccessful, and the outbreak of World War I in
1914 effectively prevented public acceptance of the brand.
Beaux, who had
affiliated himself with the Allies and the White Russian army, had
spent 1917–19 as a lieutenant stationed far north, in the last
arctic outpost of the continent, Arkangelsk, at Mudyug Island Prison
where he interrogated Bolshevik prisoners. The polar ice, frigid
seascape, and whiteness of the snowy terrain sparked his desire to
capture the crisp fragrance of this landscape into a new perfume
compound.
Beaux perfected what
was to become Chanel No. 5 over several months in the late summer and
autumn of 1920. He worked from the rose and jasmine base of Rallet
No. 1. altering it to make it cleaner, more daring, reminiscent of
the pristine polar freshness he had inhabited during his war years.
He experimented with modern synthetics, adding his own invention
"Rose E. B" and notes derived from a new jasmine source, a
commercial ingredient called Jasophore. The revamped, complex formula
also ramped up the quantities of orris-iris-root and natural musks.
The revolutionary
key was Beaux's use of aldehydes. Aldehydes are organic compounds of
carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. They are manipulated in the laboratory
at crucial stages of chemical reaction whereby the process arrests
and isolates the scent. When used creatively, aldehydes act as
"seasonings", an aroma booster. Beaux's student, Constantin
Weriguine, said the aldehyde Beaux used had the clean note of the
arctic, "a melting winter note". Legend has it that this
wondrous concoction was the inadvertent result of a laboratory
mishap. A laboratory assistant, mistaking a full strength mixture for
a ten percent dilution, had jolted the compound with a dose of
aldehyde in quantity never before used. Beaux prepared ten glass
vials for Chanel's inspection. Numbered 1–5 then 20–24, the gap
presented the core May rose, jasmine and aldehydes in two
complementary series, each group a variation of the compound. "Number
five. Yes," Chanel said later, "that is what I was waiting
for. A perfume like nothing else. A woman's perfume, with the scent
of a woman."
Chanel envisioned a
design that would be an antidote for the over-elaborate, precious
fussiness of the crystal fragrance bottles then in fashion
popularized by Lalique and Baccarat. Her bottle would be "pure
transparency ...an invisible bottle." It is generally considered
that the bottle design was inspired by the rectangular beveled lines
of the Charvet toiletry bottles, which, outfitted in a leather
traveling case, were favored by her lover, Arthur "Boy"
Capel.[6] Some say it was the whiskey decanter he used that she
admired and wished to reproduce in "exquisite, expensive,
delicate glass."
The first bottle
produced in 1919, differed from the Chanel No. 5 bottle known today.
The original container had small, delicate, rounded shoulders and was
sold only in Chanel boutiques to select clients. In 1924, when
"Parfums Chanel" incorporated, the glass proved too thin to
sustain shipping and distribution. This is the point in time when the
only significant design change took place. The bottle was modified
with square, faceted corners.
In a marketing
brochure issued in 1924, "Parfums Chanel" described the
vessel, which contained the fragrance: "the perfection of the
product forbids dressing it in the customary artifices. Why rely on
the art of the glassmaker ...Mademoiselle is proud to present simple
bottles adorned only by ...precious teardrops of perfume of
incomparable quality, unique in composition, revealing the artistic
personality of their creator."
Unlike the bottle,
which has remained the same since redesigned in 1924, the stopper has
gone through numerous modifications. The original stopper was a small
glass plug. The octagonal stopper, which became a brand signature,
was instituted in 1924, when the bottle shape was changed. The 1950s
gave the stopper a bevel cut and a larger, thicker silhouette. In the
1970s the stopper became even more prominent but, in 1986, it was
re-proportioned so its size was more harmonious with the scale of the
bottle.
The "pocket
flacon" devised to be carried in the purse was introduced in
1934. The price point and container size were developed to appeal to
a broader customer base. It represented an aspirational purchase, to
appease the desire for a taste of exclusivity in those who found the
cost of the larger bottle prohibitive.
The bottle, over
decades, has itself become an identifiable cultural artifact, so much
so that Andy Warhol chose to commemorate its iconic status in the
mid-1980s with his pop art, silk-screen, Ads: Chanel.
Ernest Beaux was
born in Moscow, Russia, the brother of Edouard Beaux, who worked for
Alphonse Rallet & Co. of Moscow, then the foremost Russian
perfume house and purveyor to the Imperial courts. In 1898, A. Rallet
and Company, with approximately 1500 employees and 675 products, was
sold to the French perfume house, Chiris of La Bocca.
Ernest completed his
primary education that same year, and from 1898–1900 apprenticed as
laboratory technician in the soap works of Rallet. After his
obligatory two years of military service in France, he returned to
Moscow in 1902, where he started his perfumery training at Rallet
under the guidance of their technical director, A. Lemercier. He
finished his perfumery education in 1907, earned a promotion to
senior perfumer, and was elected to the board of directors.
In 1912 Russia
celebrated the centennial of the Battle of Borodino, the turning
point in Napoleon's Russian ambitions. For this celebration Ernest
Beaux created the fragrance "Bouquet de Napoleon," a floral
Eau de Cologne, for Rallet. It proved to be a major commercial
success.[10]
The following year,
1913, marked the tercentenary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty.
To follow up on his "Bouquet de Napoleon" success, Ernest
Beaux created a now lost fragrance, the "Bouquet de Catherine",
honoring Catherine the Great. This fragrance is not to be confused
with a fragrance from Brocard, Rallet's chief competitor in Russia
called "The Empress's Favorite Bouquet", which later
evolved into the Soviet version, "Red Moscow."
Bouquet de Catherine
was not a marketing success, perhaps due to Catherine the Great's
German heritage at a time of rising tensions between Russia and
Germany which would lead, in 1914, to World War I. While born and
raised in Russia, Ernest Beaux's French heritage brought him into the
French army. While it was generally expected that this war would last
no more than a few months, he was not released from military service
until 1919, having by this time seen service in the infantry fighting
against Germany and then as an intelligence officer and interrogator
at an Allied prison camp at the Kola Peninsula at the Murmansk Oblast
during the Russian Civil War.
While serving in the
French military, Ernest Beaux's perfumer colleagues at Rallet fled
during Russia's October Revolution to La Bocca, France, to continue
working with Chiris.In 1919 Ernest Beaux, released now from the army,
settled in Paris but continued to have a relationship with the former
Rallet employees at La Boca.
Chanel No. 5
In 1912, Ernest
Beaux married Iraïde de Schoenaich (1881-1961), who gave birth
to their son, Edouard[ (1913-1993), the following year. During the
Russian Civil War, Iraïde escaped from Russia through Finland with
her infant son. They reached France by sea following a dangerous
two-month-long voyage, during which time Iraïde fell deeply in love
with another man. Ernest divorced her and took custody of their son,
while Iraïde moved to Nice to work with her lover. Ernest later
married Yvonne Girodon (1893-1980), with whom he had a daughter,
Madeleine.
Coco Chanel and the
N°5
At that time, Joseph
Robert was the chief perfumer at Chiris. With little prospect of
being promoted under him, Ernest Beaux tried to use his contacts to
the emigrated Russian nobility to get new projects. In 1920, with the
help of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (1891–1941), a
companion of Coco Chanel (1883–1971), he arranged a meeting in
Cannes late in the summer of 1920, where he presented his current and
former works to Mlle. Chanel. Chanel chose the "No. 5" as a
Christmas present for her best clients. When Ernest Beaux asked her
how she wanted to name that scent, she replied: "I always launch
my collection on the 5th day of the 5th months, so the number 5 seems
to bring me luck – therefore, I will name it 'Nº 5'".
Initially only 100
flacons of Chanel Nº 5 were produced, which she gave away on
Christmas 1921 for free to her best clients. However, soon the demand
was such that she decided to launch the perfume officially for sale
in her shops in 1922. That year she also launched a second fragrance
from the two numbered series of bottles that Beaux had presented her,
which were numbered one through five, and twenty through twenty-four:
Chanel Nº 22, the bottle no. 22 from the second series. However,
since this didn't do as well as Nº 5, it was withdrawn and only
relaunched in 1926.
Ernest Beaux left
Chiris in 1922 to head a sales agency for his friend Eugene Charabot
in Paris. However, Chanel Nº 5 did so well that Bader and
Wertheimer, owners of Galeries Lafayette, bought the rights to it
from Coco Chanel on April 4, 1924, and founded Parfums Chanel, for
which they hired Ernest Beaux as chief perfumer. In his new function
Ernest Beaux created many famous perfumes until he retired in 1954;
his successor as chief perfumer of Perfumes Chanel was Henri Robert.
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