Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [101]
Yet N° 5’s appearance is also typical of an enduring element in the allure of all great perfumes: the secrecy surrounding their ingredients and the manner of their creation. The provenance of any fine perfume is better thought of with reference to the old alchemists, who in the manner of all secret societies, ensured the idea of exclusivity by keeping their “knowledge” hidden. The alchemist’s exalted claims were never made by the perfumers, but there were parallels. Certainly, the perfumers understood that while they dealt in an art whose methods were practical ones, the process and the results were often intangible.
Whatever has been written or said to the contrary, it is not actually known how or when Gabrielle Chanel met the gifted young perfumer Ernest Beaux. Even more significantly, no one really knows exactly when Chanel N° 5 was created. In fact, from its two creators’ first meeting to the perfume’s inception, its production and its very first sales, Chanel N° 5 is shrouded in mystery. But the main reason for this is because, from the outset, Gabrielle and Beaux understood that this was crucial.
The story has traditionally been told in the following way: Gabrielle had decided she wanted to have a perfume as an accompaniment to her clothes, and during the summer of 1920, Dmitri Pavlovich introduced her to Ernest Beaux, whom he had known through Beaux’s connection with the Russian court. Together, Gabrielle and Beaux now set out to create Gabrielle’s perfume. By early 1921, Chanel N° 5 was in production and being launched. The month is often given as May. However, remembering that Dmitri’s diary tells us it wasn’t until a year later—February 1921—that he himself met Gabrielle, it is almost impossible that Gabrielle and Beaux could have made, packaged and launched their perfume between, approximately, February and May of that year. Either Dmitri did not introduce Chanel to Beaux, or if he did, the perfume had to have been launched later.
While Chanel has become one of the world’s most famous “brands,” without N° 5’s high profile, most of us might barely have heard of Coco Chanel, or her part in revolutionizing women’s lives. Although Gabrielle had already begun to formulate elements of her myth by 1921, it was in turn furthered by the creation of Chanel N° 5. Both have been perpetuated by the Chanel Company. With N° 5’s given date of creation—1921—mired in uncertainty, who was Ernest Beaux, the man who helped make the first Chanel perfume such an outstanding success?
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 N° 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 N° 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 N° 5 was launched “at the time of the Cannes Conference,” but this