The Secret of Chanel No. 5 (41 page)

16
Americans threw themselves into the pleasures of material comforts and cozy domesticity:
Donica Belisle, “Suburbanization and Mass Culture in North America,”
History Cooperative Journal
57 (Spring 2006), www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/57/belisle.html.

17
Writes one historian, “In 1955, $9,000,000,000 was poured into United States advertising … A cosmetics tycoon, probably mythical, was quoted as saying, ‘We don't sell lipstick, we buy customers' “:
Packard,
The Hidden Persuaders,
21.

18
“any product not only must be good but must appeal to our feelings”:
Packard,
The Hidden Persuaders,
32.

19
One 1950s advertiser claimed, “Infatuation with one's own body … and sex [were] now used differently to sell products”:
Packard,
The Hidden Persuaders,
84.

20
“A perfume is different on different women because every woman has a skin chemistry all her own”:
To a limited extent, perfumes do smell differently on the skin of individual people. Scientists have suspected that the rate at which a scent diffuses on our skin and the way it is perceived by others is influenced by everything from skin hydration and body temperature to the effect of our diet and the depth of our wrinkles. The differences, however, are largely overstated. The primary factors in how a scent unfolds on our bodies turn out to be simply room temperature and a perfume's concentration. This means that the effect of our skin's unique chemistry is actually minimal and limited to the first few moments of the experience–the appreciation of those fleeting top notes. So two friends comparing the scent of a perfume on their skin at a department-store beauty counter might notice a distinction at the moment of application. The friend with the oilier skin will find that the scent does last longer. Fifteen minutes later, however, the differences between how it smells on one arm or another literally start to evaporate. Unless you are applying Chanel No. 5 a couple of times an hour, no one will be getting “your” unique impression. Since fine fragrances at the perfume strength are designed to last five or six hours (and will often last much longer if applied to skin that is well moisturized), such frequent application would be expensively overpowering. See R. Schwarzenback and L. Berteschi, “Models to Assess Perfume Diffusion from Skin,”
International Journal of Cosmetic Science
23 (2001): 85–98; 85, 92.

21
Chanel No. 5 was the first fragrance ever advertised on television:
Chanel archives.

22
“Nothing but a few drops of Chanel No. 5”:
in Haedrich,
Coco Chanel,
177.

23
Marilyn Monroe said about that interview, “People are funny”:
Marilyn Monroe then went on to explain to the interviewer: “Someone once asked me, ‘What do you wear in bed? Pajama tops? Bottoms? Or a nightgown?' So I said, ‘Chanel No. 5.' Because it's the truth. You know, I don't want to say ‘nude,' but … it's the truth"; see Kremmel, ed.,
Marilyn Monroe and the Camera,
15, quoting a 1960 interview with
Marie Claire
editor George Belmont.

24
For some reason, the fashion for Chanel No. 5 was fading:
Madsen,
Chanel,
282.

25
Even more important, “In France, in Europe, in the United States, the sales outlets exploded”:
Abescat and Stavridès, “Derrière l'Empire Chanel,” 78.

26
With the expansion, “the price [of a bottle] went lower, lower, lower”:
Ibid.

1
idea behind pop art was to use mass-cultural imagery playfully:
See Princeton Museum of Art,
Pop Art: Contemporary Perspectives
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 10, 100. Also Jean-Michel Vecchiet, dir.,
Andy Warhol, L'Oeuvre Incarnée: Vies et Morts de Andy Warhol,
France Télévisions, 2005  (film).

2
“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art”:
Andy Warhol,
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again
(New York: Mariner Books, 1977), 92.

3
In her book
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster”: Dana Thomas,
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
(New York, Penguin, 2007).

4
While Jacques was, by all accounts, brilliant at raising racehorses:
For the best discussion, see Abescat and Stavridès, “Derrière l'Empire Chanel.”

5
Coco Chanel simply called him “the kid”:
Jocelyn de Moubray, “Jacques Wertheimer” (obituary),
The Independent,
February 10, 1996, www.independent. co.uk/news/people/obituaryjacques-wertheimer-1318229.html.

6
Jasmine production was in decline:
For details in this paragraph, see “Business Abroad: King of Perfume,”
Time,
September 14, 1953.

7
“Chanel dominated the Paris fashion world …”:
“Chanel, the Couturier, Dead in Paris,”
New York Times,
January 11, 1971.

8
“It was,” the column read …
: Ibid.

9
share in the all-important American market had slipped to under 5 percent:
“Chanel S.A. Company History,”
Funding Universe,
www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Chanel-SA-Company-History.html.

10
“Chanel was dead. … Nothing was happening”:
Thomas,
Deluxe,
150.

11
“From the age of eighteen, when he first joined Chanel, [Jacques Helleu] focused his efforts on turning the signature black-and-white packaging"–and especially the trademark bottle–"into a universally recognized brand”:
Laurence Benaïm,
Jacques Helleu and Chanel
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2006), 8.

12
Marilyn Monroe, as the perfume critic Tania Sanchez puts it, wore Chanel No. 5 because it was sexy:
Turin and Sanchez,
Perfumes,
260.

13
there on the cover o
f Look
magazine, he read the caption “Most Beautiful Woman in the World”:
Chanel archives.

14
“Chanel,” Laurence Benaïm has perceptively noted, “chooses its models as carefully as any harvest of May roses or jasmine from Grasse”:
Benaïm,
Jacques Helleu and Chanel,
8.

15
Best remembered today are Chanel No. 5 shorts such as
La Piscine
(1979),
L'invitation au rêve
(1982),
Monument
(1986), and
La Star
(1990):
For a detailed account of the advertising films, see Ternon,
Histoire du Chanel No. 5 Chanel,
133 ff. Information here and below supplied by Chanel archives.

16
Only a “handful of major brands–Hermès and Chanel in particular–strive to maintain and seem to achieve true luxury,” Thomas claims. “The quality …”:
Thomas,
Deluxe,
323.

17
Many credit this revitalization of Chanel during the 1970s to the new, energetic leadership of Pierre's grandson, Alain Wertheimer:
See, for example, Madsen,
Chanel,
334; Thomas,
Deluxe,
150.

18
fragrances “based on the complicated trajectory of the founder's difficult and flamboyant life … scents she cherished, outdoors and at home”: Allure,
February 2007, 178.

19
According to Polge, it is the scent of Chanel No. 5:
Jacques Polge, Chanel, interview, 2009.

1
“Rules put famous perfumes ‘at risk'” and “Allergen rules may alter scents of great perfumes”:
Chris Watt, “Rules Put Famous Perfumes ‘At Risk,' “
The Herald
(Glasgow), September 25, 2009, 3; Basil Katz, “Allergen Rules May Alter Scents of Great Perfumes,” Reuters wire service, September 24, 2009, www. reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58N3LQ20090924?pageNumber=1&virtualB randChannel=11604; and Geneviève Roberts, “The Sweet Smell of Success.”

2
the end of Chanel No. 5 was near and that “twentieth-century perfumery [is] history”:
See, for example, the online discussion by perfumer Octavian Coifan, “1000 Fragrances,” http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/2009/04/ endangered-fragrances.html.

3
Word spread that the notorious forty-third IFRA amendment would limit jasmine to 0.7 percent:
See IFRA, “Standards,"www.ifraorg.org/Home/Code,+Standards+Compliance/IFRA+Standards/page.aspx.

4
“When the new IFRA standards were issued we immediately checked the percentages o
f jasmine grandiflora
and
[jasmine] sambac
“:
quoted in Katz, “Allergen Rules May Alter Scents of Great Perfumes.”

5
the scent of warm, clean skin:
For a discussion, see, for example, Burr,
Emperor of Scent,
216.

6
the world's first “nitro-musk”:
For an excellent discussion, see Turin and Sanchez,
Perfumes,
35; also Burr,
Emperor of Scent,
216. As Turin explains to Burr in
The Emperor of Scent,
today perfumers work with a new generation of synthetic musks, and there have been several stages in the evolution of these materials.

The first substitutes for the original nitro-musks were a family of synthetics known as polycyclic musks, which didn't have the nitrogen-and-oxygen combination that made the nitro-musks unstable. In fact, that was precisely the new dilemma they posed: they weren't biodegradable, making them less than ideal environmentally; Burr,
Emperor,
217.

The next–and current stage in the development of synthetic musks–are a group known as macrocyclics and, more recently, alicyclics, which are safe, sustainable, and increasingly affordable. The macrocyclics, in particular, have the distinctive smell of natural musk and sometimes an additional fruit aroma. See Philip Kraft, “Aroma Chemicals IV: Musks,” in
Chemistry and Technology of Flavours and Fragrances,
ed. David J. Rowe (London: Blackwell, 2004); and Till Luckenbach and David Epel, Marcus Eh, “New Alicyclic Musks: The Fourth Generation of Musk Odorants,”
Chemistry and Biodiversity,
1, no. 12 (2004): 1975–84.

7
Today musk ketone is still permitted only with strict limitations:
See annex III of the European Cosmetic Directive.

8
As Christopher Sheldrake explains, while those nitro-musks were wonderful, powerful, and inexpensive:
Christopher Sheldrake, Chanel, interview, 2009.

9
And, as perfumer Virginia Bonofiglio quips, “You can't make cheap that smells like Chanel No. 5”:
Virginia Bonofiglio, Fashion Institute of Technology, interview, 2009.

10
Polge tells a story about how his predecessor, Henri Robert, used to watch Ernest Beaux correct an entire batch of Chanel No. 5 perfume in the production facility:
Jacques Polge, Chanel, interview, 2009.

11
Responding to this threat, in the early 1980s Chanel brokered a long-term agreement with the Mul family:
Chanel, interview, 2009; also reported in Roberts, “The Sweet Smell of Success.”

¹²
Soon, Chanel hopes simply to have resolved the problem of jasmine sensitivity entirely:
Christopher Sheldrake, Chanel, interview, 2009.