Chanel No. 5, perhaps the most famous perfume in the world, is 100 years old. And to this day a marketing miracle that helped a global corporation to rise.
Fragrances are ephemeral, one would think. Chanel No. 5 is the living evidence to the contrary. The golden yellow perfume was created in 1921, an eternity ago, when most women were still farmers or housewives and only used a little rose scent.
However, the Roaring Twenties also began in the cities at that time. One of their representatives was Gabrielle Chanel, an idiosyncratic fashion designer, an early orphan who started out small and just called herself “seamstress”. Her eccentric wish to Ernest Beaux, a Frenchman of Russian descent: he should create a perfume that was not just made of lily or rose concentrate, but was an ingenious creation of several scent notes, “knitted like a dress”. Such a novel combination corresponds to the “complexity of a woman,” said the 38-year-old Parisian.
Beaux worked out several scent samples. The fifth was liked by “Coco” Chanel. Five was her lucky number. And also the name of the perfume. A disgraceful number for a product of beauty and wellbeing? Yes, and one that the woman should apply “wherever she wants to be kissed,” added Coco, once again way ahead of her time.
The extravagant French woman did not lack intuition and courage. The mélange of several scent notes, a matter of course for today’s perfumes, was revolutionary at the time. Equally new was the combination of fashion and perfume – something that every better luxury corporation now follows.
80 ingredients in number five
The Paris exhibition “Gabrielle Chanel: Manifeste de la mode” (in the Musée Galliera, until July 18) shows how close Coco’s sleek, elegant robes and the timeless No. 5 fragrance in a timeless bottle were to one another. How they complemented one another, supported one another, even increased one another. That was Cocos Flair – Parisian flair.
And what is the composition of No. 5? “The handwritten formula by Ernest Beaux from 1921 is in my safe,” explains today’s “nose” of the Chanel group, Olivier Polge. According to him, the ominous number five consists of a good 80 different ingredients that Chanel produces itself today. The top note of the first quarter of an hour consists of bergamot, neroli and ylang-ylang; the lingering heart note contains iris, jasmine, lily of the valley and may rose, the underlying base note amber, sandalwood, vanilla and vetiver. The addition of aldehydes (hydrocarbon derivatives), which is common today and has a reinforcing effect similar to that of lemon on strawberries, was a first-class innovation a hundred years ago.
The best, because involuntary advertising was once made by Marilyn Monroe. When the journalist asked what kind of sleeping gown she was wearing, she breathed that all she needed was “a few drops of No. 5 “. This is how legends are born. Chanel representative Anna von Hahn does not even want to confirm what is already clear, namely that No. 5 is the best-selling perfume of all time. True chic is not imposing.
After all, No. 5 some advertising icons like Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Gisele Bündchen in the new century. Brad Pitt – men have noses too – says in a spot without any music or movement: “Wherever I go, you are.”
According to industry estimates, one million of the square bottles with the square label still go over the counter every year, although the scent is said to be a little too little sweet for today’s tastes, perhaps even a touch too powdery. Today there are offshoots like the “No. 5 Eau ”, with which Olivier Polge – only the fourth“ nose ”of the company in a century – has created a fresher, contemporary and transparent version.
How much No. 5 has recorded over a century, the owner family Wertheimer keeps to itself. She joined Coco Chanel in 1924 and still owns the Chanel company to this day. In 2018 the brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer presented business figures for the first time ever: annual net profit of 1.5 billion euros, total sales of 8.6 billion, created by 28,000 employees in the fashion, perfume, cosmetics, watches and jewelry sectors. They are doing a great job: in 2019, the last year before the Corona crisis, the luxury label with the two intertwined “c” already achieved sales of almost eleven billion euros.
No. 5 only contributes a small part to this. That only makes his performance even greater when you consider that the global company Chanel owes its existence not least to a fragrance. Rumor has it that No. 5 would have increased during the pandemic. A perfume bottle is not an investment like the bags of Louis Vuitton, Gucci or Chanel became during the Covid-19 crisis. But a little No. 5 Standing at home is also something, not least an act against the fast-moving and transient nature of this world.
