Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Beaux’s father was one of the directors of the perfume company A. Rallet & Co., founded in Moscow by a Frenchman and purveyor of fragrance to the Russian court. Ernest joined the company, worked under its enlightened perfumery director and was encouraged to explore both new ingredients for perfume, and contemporary art and culture. He was already celebrated as a perfumer when the revolution drove him and his colleagues to leave Russia.

The Rallet company based itself outside Grasse, in the south of France, and Beaux arrived in late 1919—having lost everything — to begin his life again. Beaux was noted for his experimentation with synthetic components, including synthetic aldehydes. (Aldehydes are those organic compounds present in various natural materials, for example, rose oil and citrus essence.) His famed early fragrance, Bouquet de Catherine, probably created in 1913, most likely used synthetic aldehydes, which would be essential in the development of Chanel № 5. Between 1919 and 1920, Beaux further experimented on the Bouquet de Catherine formula.

In 1946, he would give a lecture in which he described his own contribution to Chanel № 5. Questioned about its creation, he said it was “in 1920 exactly, upon my return from the war.” We remember that, in fact, he returned from the war in 1919. Beaux then said that № 5 was launched “at the time of the Cannes Conference,” but this was held in early January 1922. So he has now told us that Chanel № 5 was launched in both 1921 and 1922. In the end, all we know is that at some point in 1920, or 1921, Beaux was introduced to Gabrielle, and they began developing the new fragrance. Like Gabrielle herself, the true provenance of № 5 has been converted into a myth.

Despite Misia Sert’s urge to take credit for the triumphs of her “protégée” Gabrielle, the following story is, however, plausible. Lucien Daudet, secretary to the empress Eugénie, wife to Napoléon III, had brought Misia an astonishing beauty formula he had unearthed in the papers of the empress. From the hand of a perfume maker to the sixteenth-century queen Catherine de’ Medicis, consort to Henri II of France, was the recipe for the renowned toilet water The Secret of the Medici. Neither exactly a perfume nor a normal cosmetic cream, this was an essence said to repel miraculously the signs of aging. Misia’s claim that she saw the formula’s possibilities, immediately took it to Gabrielle and proposed that she launch a toilet water based upon the recipe is probably correct. As Gabrielle’s name “was then on everyone’s lips, it was in itself a guarantee of success.” 2

Gabrielle liked Misia’s idea, bought the formula and, according to Misia, they set to work, “painstakingly experimenting with a very severe bottle, ultra-simple, almost pharmaceutical, but in the Chanel style and with the elegant touch she gave to everything.” 3Here, of course, we are meant to see Misia’s hand in the earliest version of the unmistakable Chanel № 5 bottle.

Misia said that within weeks, Gabrielle had launched L’Eau de Chanel, and that “it succeeded far beyond our wildest hopes. It was unbelievable.” 4Her story is borne out by a document — in the Chanel archives — for a skin-care product called L’Eau de Chanel signed and dated by Misia: July 1919. This Eau de Chanel may well have been a crucial step on the road to № 5.

Gabrielle had a preoccupation with cleanliness amounting almost to a neurosis, and she loathed it when someone didn’t “smell good.” Her admiration for the grandes cocottes in part stemmed from their pleasant fragrance. By contrast, speaking of society women, Gabrielle would say, “Ah yes, those women dressed in ball gowns, whose photographs we contemplate with a touch of nostalgia, were dirty… They were dirty. Are you surprised? But that’s the way it was.” 5While all society women were not, of course, unwashed, Gabrielle’s sense of smell was hypersensitive. Decrying this “unwashed” upper class, she also abhorred the simple flower fragrances she said were used to camouflage their bad habits.

She would say:

I, who love woman, wanted to give her clothes in which she could be comfortable, in which she could drive a car, yet at the same time clothes that emphasized her femininity, clothes that flowed with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed. I wanted to give her a perfume, but an artificial perfume… I don’t want rose or lily of the valley; I want a perfume that is compound. 6

Gabrielle wanted a perfume that scented a clean female body, a fragrance that through its subtle olfactory message completed her picture of a young, forward-looking woman who was independent, fashionable and desirable. Also important, she wanted a scent that would last.

With very few exceptions, fragrance had been the province of the perfumers, who also sold them. One rare exception, Paul Poiret, had long since developed a beauty and perfume business in tandem with his couture. But while he had been well in advance of his times, Poiret now lagged behind, and it was Gabrielle’s star that was in the ascendant. She was a master at capitalizing on her own and others’ intuitions, and the practical sources of her success would always derive from combining her singular creative abilities with her talents as an entrepreneur. This always involved having around her a small group, usually invisible to the public, who supported and inspired her. This group of people was fairly fluid, but a handful remained with Gabrielle for many years. In this instance, the person acting as a catalyst for her latest project was the inspired perfumer Ernest Beaux.

It might at first appear that Gabrielle’s introduction of clothes that were costly and simple was the exact opposite of what she now sought in a perfume: a composite refinement. But, for Gabrielle, these two ideas were entirely complementary. She was never in any doubt that her “simple” clothes were actually artificial, and would say “A dress is artificial, fabricated.” In the same way, she believed a perfume shouldn’t try to emulate nature: it should be a synthesis of the natural. Thus her perfume would be a distillation of complex elements in a bottle of refined simplicity.

Misia said that Gabrielle had “the genius’ to see their Eau de Chanel as the beginning of something, and that its success gave her the idea to go beyond a cosmetic and make perfumes too. Gabrielle is normally given the credit for the original concept for Chanel № 5: a synthesis of fragrances. She is famously supposed to have described this to Beaux, who then set about putting it into practice.

There are various claims involving the originality of Chanel № 5; for instance, it is often said that it was the first synthetic perfume. It wasn’t. It was, however, the first synthetic fragrance created in the twenties. The first “modern” perfume we know of featuring any synthetic components was Fougère Royale, created by Paul Parquet for Houbigant, way back in 1882. (Another early “modern” perfume using synthetics was Jicky, made by Aimé Guerlain in 1889.)

However, Beaux was one of the earliest perfumers who understood the significance of aldehydes, and his brilliance lay in his ability to blend perfectly the natural and the chemical elements in such a way that the chemicals reinforced the natural. Of almost equal importance was his understanding that the aldehydes kept the perfume stable, thereby making it last far longer once sprayed from its bottle. The use of these chemicals was to revolutionize luxury perfumes.

When Beaux met Gabrielle, he was experimenting further on Bouquet de Catherine, which contained a pronounced aldehyde element. Early in the recent war, aware of possible sensibilities about the perfume’s namesake, Catherine the Great, the perfume had been renamed. Interestingly, it was now simply a number: Rallet № 1. Almost certainly, Beaux’s researches on Rallet № 1 were what he now brought to Gabrielle. In his lecture, he would say, “I came to present my creations, two series: numbers 1–5 and 20–24. She chose a few, one of which was № 5.” Beaux remembered asking Gabrielle, “What should it be called?” She said that she was presenting her dress collection “on May 5, the fifth (month) of the year; let’s leave the name № 5.” 7