Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel, one of the greatest
fashion designers of the 20th century.
There have been a lot of versions of the true story. Was number 5 really her lucky number? Or was it the test sample number 5 that Coco had chosen and approved? No one knows it for sure any more. A lot of famous society ladies would claim that they had to do something with the launch and success of Chanel Number 5. Chanel’s power was to know how to create mystery and success, and especially the importance of making people believe they are a part of it.
Coco loved perfume and her sense of smell was extraordinary. “When someone offers me a flower, I can smell the hands that picked them,” she said.
“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” These words of a French poet Paul Valery would become one of her famous slogans. She believed that the droplets of perfume applied behind the ear, on the back of a wrist and in the hollow of a shoulder, were a must for any elegant woman.
In the early 1920’s it was not unusual for the couturiers to express interest in making their own perfume. However, no one had ever dared to move away from the floral scents before Chanel. The smell of one flower was a widely common preference.
Ernest Beaux, the owner of a laboratory in Grasse, and Coco Chanel were a perfect business match. Beaux was one of the first chemists to understand the importance of synthetic scents.
Chanel intuitionally recognized the value of synthetic scents.
“I want a perfume that is composed. It’s a paradox. On a woman, a natural flower scent smells artificial. Perhaps a natural perfume must be created artificially,” she said.
Beaux was at first skeptical about her proposal to develop a perfume for her. Chanel made a tour of the laboratory of Beaux, not missing a single detail about the process of making perfume. She made a deep impression on the chemist with her acute sense of smell and her courage to propose various startling combinations.
In the end Beaux developed several formulas for her. Coco is said to have sniffed them one after the another, comparing them. She came back to the fifth. “That’s what I expected. A perfume unlike any other ever made. A woman’s perfume…”
Another brilliant idea of Chanel was a very simple square bottle – the idea sensational for the time of cupid and flower shaped flacons.
The rest of the story is widely known. According to Misia Sert, the friend of Coco Chanel, the success of Chanel Number 5 was “like a winning lottery ticket.”
