Chanel No5 smell a century
Coco Chanel was onto something when they concocted his now famous perfume. A new exhibition in Paris
explores the cultural significance of the legendary designer and his enduringly popular perfume
A fragrance that embodies every great movement of the avant-garde since the Second World War?
This is a high demand, nor that a new exhibition, which opened in Paris is happy to do earlier this month.
Titled Culture Chanel (I know, only in France), the exhibition is really to show a fairly serious attempt
like Chanel No5, the fragrant intersection of art, music, fashion, design and change social drama that took
place after 1918.
Launched in 1921, Chanel No5 was undoubtedly a radical perfume. On the one hand he was the first synthetic
aldehydes. This does not seem romantic, but Coco Chanel, the shooter intoxicating androgyny of the Jazz Age,
was their first fragrance to smell quite modern. As always, she was ahead of the curve. The hipster, Victor
Margueritte novel about a young woman who was her boyfriend cheating on her discover chooses to live his
life under the conditions of a man - Several fans and hair cut - has caused a stir when it was published in
1923. In many ways it could have been written for Coco.
So it was an androgynous scent, at least by the standards of that time. This meant not only that dominate
floral notes, musk and no woozy irresistible.
The only way accomplice Chanel Ernest Beaux (a dashing native pre-revolutionary Moscow and famous "nose")
was convinced to achieve was with aldehydes, which he claimed allowed him to create a fragrance garden in
all its complexity - and what is more as "in the shadows."
Chanel, who did not want flowers in their own juice, and finally chose the value of a bouquet with jasmine,
iris and rose - even 77 ingredients, I urge you to identify the true promise of beauty, they are mixed
transparent. It was the fifth version fine, so 5
Or is there another explanation for the name? "Five" is significant at Chanel for many reasons. For a modern
woman, she was remarkably attached charms and symbols. Five is important in Hinduism and Buddhism. In
addition, Igor Stravinsky had, she had received at her home outside Paris in 1920 for over a year, a
collection of short pieces written for children, while he was there, called the Five Fingers.
A good deal of Cubism direct and bold refutation, decorated bottles "feminine" ubiquitous categorically at
the time - then there was this minimalist bottle, was a classic. Chanel borrowed the character of leaflets
Dadaists produced at the time, the black lines and the effect of binding on the label of Bauhaus, Picasso
and office proofreading by Marcel Proust, which he did in cutting and pasting passages rewritten the old
one. The origin of the box was beige and black, because for Chanel, is the beige color of nature.
Beige turned white when she realized that to keep up with demand for its fragrance in its four branches they
have to ensure the production would industrialize. It is ironic that Chanel, the inspiration notebook
deleted otherwise great time when she hooked with a Nazi officer during the Second World War, eventually
going into business with a Jewish family. But that's what happens when they signed a deal with Paul and
Peter Wertheimer, 1924, with whom she still one of the founders of the Society of perfume houses perfumes
Chanel, the world's most successful. It was at this time that the plug of an emerald was fed into shape it
was robust for distribution abroad just before the start.
So, yes, if the exposure is a clever piece of marketing, it also works as a social history.
If you happen to go in Paris and, do not forget to book a session on the floor of the workshop. You need the
booklet - the windows, as casually as glass with the bottle and minimalist in its observations. But you have
enough time to go to - it is open from noon to midnight.
The opening was packed. It seems the more we move from Chanel life, the more draws. Certainly played a big
role in the lives of many great personalities of the past 90 years, No. 5.
An enlightened patron who was wearing his favorite poems around, Chanel was a true friend of Cocteau,
Picasso and Dali. It's a nod to the show in the garden of La Pausa, their villa in the South of France,
which recently came on the market for € 33 million ($ 52 million) to bask.
I hope to buy Wertheimer, even if only to avoid, does not transform skin into a seedy night club for
billionaires lizard.
It is that Chanel had a thing for millionaires, but she was also a feminist, for example, not a dogma, a
proto-Green, an early proponent of world exports, and one of the first designers to star in his own ads. It
also has the most careful I met spray regime completed.
According to the brochure of the exhibition: "Every morning, a young assistant evaporate No. 5 at the
entrance to the building of his empire in the Rue Cambon in Paris, a moment before walking Mademoiselle
Chanel, after he warned his imminent arrival by the doorman at the Ritz. The smell still lingers around the
staircase and mirror in her apartment. No5 They also sprayed in breathing in his house. "
Each coal No5. Now there is a product waiting for a start developed.