The Secret of Chanel No. 5 Read Free

was Chanel’s No. 5 that everyone coveted, and she hardly needed to bother. However, Coco’s possessiveness was also legendary. In the end, this change of heart would be the beginning of a pattern of having second thoughts about business deals and entrepreneurial gambles–a pattern that would cause her, especially with Chanel No. 5, no end of trouble.
    Molyneux found her ire amusing. In fact, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to needle his quick-tempered competitor. Mademoiselle Chanel was upset at his calling his perfume Numéro Cinq, he told his customers. With a bit of sly irony, he began simply advertising it instead to anyone who would listen as Le Parfum Connu: the known perfume, the perfume with a reputation. What he meant, of course, was the perfume with that familiar number. Then again, Coco also had a bit of a reputation herself.
    When Coco Chanel began selling her signature fragrance from her busy fashion-house headquarters in Paris, the result was, as Misia Sert put it, “success beyond anything we could have imagined. … like a winning lottery ticket.” “Eau Chanel,” as Misia still stubbornly–but mistakenly–insisted on calling it, was “the hen laying the golden eggs.” 3 For the first four years of its existence, from its commercial launch in 1921 until 1924, Chanel No. 5 was sold only from her shops through word of mouth. Coco Chanel’s boutique strategy had been a stunning success, and among the fashionable elite of Europe it was almost immediately–as Molyneux’s joke testifies–the perfume everyone knew.
    One of the most amazing things is the simple fact that advertising had nothing to do with it. Chanel always proudly insisted that, during those first years, she never paid for any kind of promotion–despite the fact that what is lauded as the first advertisement for Chanel No. 5 appeared in 1921. Astonishingly, it came from a man who had made a habit out of mocking her in public for years and making her and the rest of French high society the butt of some of his deliciously funny satires.
    The artist of this first Chanel No. 5 tribute was none other than Georges Goursat, who had skewered her and Boy Capel in his 1914 caricature “Tangoville sur Mer.” Coco Chanel never paid him for any of his promotion, and, for that matter, he was the last person she would have hired if she were going to hire anyone. Sem–as Goursat was more familiarly known–had kept Coco Chanel in his sights ever since that first satire depicting her and Boy in a randy embrace. He had roasted her again in 1919, with an even nastier cartoon called “Mam’selle Coco,” published in his album
Le Grand Monde à l’Envers.
That title translates roughly to something like “high society upside-down,” and in it Coco Chanel is a droopy-breasted woman with a distinct slouch, shown selling her summer hats in one of her resort boutiques. It is not a flattering portrait.
    He did always think of her, at least, as a genuine arbiter of fashion, though, and in 1921 even Sem couldn’t help but be impressed by what this upstart young milliner-turned-designer had accomplished. The result was one of the earliest and most lasting images of Chanel No. 5 in this perfume’s long history, a graceful flapper gazing up longingly and wordlessly at a floating bottle of Coco Chanel’s signature scent. It was lovely and elegant, and it captured perfectly the kind of reverence this perfume immediately inspired.
    That first 1921 sketch has been mistakenly lauded and reproduced as the first Chanel No. 5 advertisement, and it is conventional wisdom that the lovely young flapper in the image is Coco Chanel. This is wishful thinking, too; Sem was applauding the success of Chanel No. 5, not endorsing it. He acknowledged the phenomenon that Coco’s perfume had instantly become and nothing more. In fact, he was even impressed enough to go out