Coco Chanel, now living in exile with Hans von Dincklage, was not happy. Not only did the complex arrangement between Les Parfums Chanel and Chanel Inc. mean that from the sales of Chanel No. 5 in the United States she received only 10 percent of a 10 percent dividend6, but she hadn’t been aware of the American production of the perfume at all. This fact alone infuriated her. “It is monstrous,” she insisted. “They produced it in Hoboken7!” It made no difference to her that the materials had come from France. Or perhaps she simply didn’t believe it.
Despite the fabulous sales that it generated, Coco Chanel was also horrified to learn that the partners at Les Parfums Chanel had arranged distribution through the United States Army. To her, it didn’t seem appropriately exclusive. The problem was one of commoditization: “From Miami to Anchorage, from Naples to Berlin, from Manila to Tokyo, next to milk chocolate8, cigarettes, and pantyhose, No. 5 attracted the G.I.s when they made their tax-free purchases in the exchange posts and military department stores.” It was the beginning of the duty-free business model that today sustains fragrance sales internationally, and it had made Coco Chanel a very rich woman. In her private war with the Wertheimers, though, she now declared, “We need to get our weapons … and I have some9!”
The weapons she meant were some new perfumes. At first, she threatened to produce a scent simply called Mademoiselle Chanel No. 510, and she planned to launch new versions as well of Ernest Beaux’s scents Bois des Îles (1926) and Cuir de Russie (1928), which she would market with the words “Mademoiselle Chanel” simply added in front of them. Her lawyers advised her that this was entirely illegal under the terms of her contract with Les Parfums Chanel. So, she produced instead perfumes that she called Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1, No. 2, and No. 31.
She may have first started producing these Mademoiselle Chanel scents before the war had ended. Faced with shortages of Chanel No. 5–a mere twenty bottles a day–and an insatiable demand among the German soldiers in occupied Paris, any savvy entrepreneur would have begun looking for ways to augment her product line. Why not add some new Chanel perfumes to the offerings at the boutique on rue Cambon?
Under the terms of the contract with the partners at Les Parfums Chanel, she had always reserved the right to sell other fragrance products from her shops; so as long as there was no distribution it was technically legal. While perfume production in France during the war was difficult–and Félix Amiot is unlikely to have helped her–some of the factories in Switzerland continued to fabricate fragrance materials in the 1940s. Just outside Zürich, for example, in the village of Dübendorf, a small perfumery called Chemische Fabrik Flora11 stayed open, and it produced some of the same materials that were used in Chanel No. 5. Whether or not Coco Chanel worked with Flora directly, she had contact with someone in the perfume industry near Zürich, because her right to produce the fragrances there later became a bone of contention.
At any rate, by the autumn of 1945 the Mademoiselle Chanel perfumes were readily available for sale in her elegant salon on rue Cambon. An American G.I. named Steven Summers bought bottles of the red-label perfumes–and of the original Chanel No. 5–on a series of weekend leaves in Paris. They were gifts for his girl back home, and they were relatively expensive gifts, too. He paid about five dollars each–more than sixty dollars a bottle–for flasks12 of what he listed indiscriminately simply as Chanel No. 5, Chanel No. 22, Chanel No. 1, and Chanel No. 31.
Mademoiselle Chanel No. 31 was one of Coco Chanel’s personal favorites, and–jettisoning for the first time Chanel No. 5 as her signature scent–became the perfume she reserved for private use. This mossy, green scent with jasmine and roses went on to become, after some reformulation by perfumer Henri Robert, “the celebrated No. 19”13 fragrance, named after the date of her birthday in August and launched commercially by Les Parfums Chanel just before her death in the early 1970s. Smelling it, the scent once prompted Coco Chanel to remark, “A perfume ought to punch you right on the nose14 … I’m not going to sniff for three days to see if it smells or not? It has to have body, and what gives a perfume body is the most expensive thing there is.” She meant, of course, the heavy doses of those exquisite and expensive floral materials from Grasse, the heart of her perfumes.
Abandoning Chanel No. 5 as her signature scent was a key turning point for the woman who had created it. She needed to think of herself as free of it, and she had found an important way of signaling this. The first of these new perfumes–Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1–was a direct assault on Chanel No. 5. She boasted that it was the scent of Chanel No. 5–"but even better15.”
Coco Chanel knew perfectly well that distributing these red-label perfumes–even without the number five on them–was illegal. The terms of the 1924 contract had stipulated clearly that she reserved the right to sell the perfumes bearing her name from her boutiques only. She could have those scents made privately, but she was the only one who could carry them. That meant there was no point in advertising, at least not in the normal way. If the only place that she was free to sell these new scents was from her boutique in Paris, then she just wasn’t going to be able to cause the kind of uproar she desired. And by 1945, she was definitely looking to bring matters with the partners at Les Parfums Chanel to a point of crisis.
The other option, of course, was simple. She could distribute her new red-label scents in defiance of her contract with Les Parfums Chanel. Let them sue her, she thought. She welcomed the publicity. In fact, Coco Chanel was counting on the fact that, even if she lost the inevitable lawsuit, she would be able to do massive damage to the perfume’s reputation. Selling her Mademoiselle fragrance collection was only a secondary goal in any of this. Her first concern was undermining Chanel No. 5 and the partners at Les Parfums Chanel, with an eye toward forcing them to revisit the terms of that contract.
The assault started one afternoon in the office of René de Chambrun, when she arrived with a collection of bottles and informed him that they were for Madame de Chambrun. Remembering the success of her whisper-campaign launch of Chanel No. 5 from her fashion house in 1922, she wanted to know what his fashionable wife, Josée, thought of them. She planned to start by creating some high-society buzz about Coco Chanel’s new perfumes, and she would tell everyone that Chanel No. 5 was poor quality and that these were better Chanel fragrances, more authentic. She also planned to start international distribution.
Knowing something was afoot, Chambrun’s first response was to call an unnamed Russian chemist and perfumer at Coty to find out what Coco Chanel had been up to. “When he came in,” the lawyer remembered, “I showed him the samples.16 He smelled and went into a trance; overcome with emotion, he shouted: ‘Fabulous! Wonder of wonders! It is No. 5, but even better!’ “ Coco Chanel was happy to confirm it–and to raise the price point accordingly.
She wanted to have the perfumes made in Switzerland, and she planned to sell them from her boutique in Paris. She also fully intended to sell them in America. It wasn’t legal, but this wasn’t a point that much concerned her. She considered that the partners at Les Parfums Chanel had already voided the initial terms of the contract. There had also been a clause guaranteeing that only perfumes that she deemed sufficiently luxurious could be sold under her name, and, although Chanel No. 5 was, in fact, one of the rare French perfumes that managed to maintain its quality during those years, thanks in part to the partners’ foresight in stockpiling materials from Grasse, that certainly wasn’t her opinion of their wartime manufacture at a plant in New Jersey. As far as she was concerned, the entire deal would have to be renegotiated. Obviously, she expected it would be to her advantage, and these new perfumes were a way of forcing the partners’ hand. Essentially, they would need to pay to stop her from damaging the reputation of Chanel No. 5.
What Coco Chanel planned to do was wreak utter havoc on the ability of Les Parfums Chanel to market Chanel No. 5 effectively. Her goal was to create as much uncertainty as possible in the mind of the consumer, and, if it meant smearing
the reputation of Chanel No. 5, she had no hesitation about doing so. In fact, she wanted it to be spread widely that Mademoiselle was unhappy with the quality of her fragrance being produced by the distributors and that she recommended no one buy it. She was producing them herself instead, for the most discriminating clients.
To get the word out, she began by working her old contacts in New York–all those friends she had made in the department store and fragrance industries during her trip to the United States in the 1930s. She had friends at Saks Fifth Avenue; she knew people like her old acquaintance Stanley Marcus, the entrepreneurial genius behind Neiman Marcus. These were the kind of men who ran businesses where postwar sales were flourishing. She had started at the Galeries Lafayette, and she knew how the game was played. She sent over shipments of the red-label perfumes, and the scents were briefly distributed and sold. As soon as the partners at Les Parfums Chanel learned what she was up to, however, they had the fragrances confiscated in the ports on arrival. So, instead, she started sending all her contacts in the New York business world free “samples.”
She also filed a lawsuit, which was covered in papers around the world. The New York Times on June 3, 1946 reported, “The suit asks that the French parent concern [Les Parfums Chanel] be ordered to cease manufacture17 and sale of all products bearing the name and to restore to her the ownership and sole rights over the products, formulae and manufacturing process” on the grounds of “inferior quality.” At stake, the journalist noted, were said to be annual sales of more than eight million dollars–$240 million today.18 It was a marketing nightmare. Here was the woman everyone thought of–legal contracts and business deals aside–as the creative force behind Chanel No. 5, saying the perfume was shoddy. There was no positive spin to put on it.
Her strategy was remarkably effective, but it was only because she was publicly attacking the quality of Chanel No. 5 and not because anyone imagined these red-label fragrances would ever compete with the original. Coco Chanel certainly didn’t have the resources or expertise to compete with Bourjois, which had long been one of the largest fragrance companies in the world.
But the release of a “super Chanel No. 5” was bound to cause a stir, and a new version might easily have generated some serious interest. No. 5 was a scent that held great fascination for many. The relationship between Chanel No. 5 and Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1, however, was a tricky one. Coco Chanel knew that her new No. 1 was “super Chanel No. 5” for one simple reason. She’d convinced someone with access to the old Rallet No. 1 formula to create it.
Who was that rogue perfumer? Several sources speculate that it must have been Ernest Beaux19. Like artists or musicians, perfumers leave silent signatures in a formula, and many fragrance experts believe that the similarities between Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1 and Chanel No. 5 are simply too close for it to be the work of anyone else. Chanel headquarters in Paris is certain, however, that whoever this person was, it simply wasn’t their perfumer. It’s a fair point, too: Ernest Beaux worked for Les Parfums Chanel and for Bourjois as the chief “nose,” and, no matter how much he respected Coco Chanel for her savvy, his loyalties should have been to the company whose entire line of fragrances he managed–because Bourjois remained one of the industry’s great powerhouses. Gilberte Beaux, Ernest’s daughter-in-law, is equally confident that he wasn’t the nose behind those fragrances, and her observation is also a good one.20 She remembers intimately, she says, how proud Ernest Beaux always was of his creation of Chanel No. 5 during the years that she knew him. He never would have done anything to harm the reputation of the scent that he considered his masterpiece. And undermining Chanel No. 5 was always part of Coco’s threat behind those lawsuits and the red-label perfumes.
In the mid-1940s, however, only a handful of other people could have created Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1. The chemical analysis comparing the fragrance with Ernest Beaux’s original scent, Rallet No. 1, is very straightforward. Someone definitely went back to the old formula–a formula that had been used to create at least one other “super Chanel No. 5"–Coty’s L’Aimant. Although more modern than the original Rallet No. 1, Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1 was identifiably of the same concept, with the same floral heart of jasmine, May rose, and lily of the valley. Instead of the heady aldehydes, though, it had an overdose of the luscious powdery notes of synthetic orris–or iris-root powder.
Where was Ernest Beaux during the Second World War? That’s the question that leaves curious perfume historians wondering. His friend Léon Givaudan–one of history’s great innovators in the science of fragrance chemistry–was based in Zürich, Coco Chanel’s home after the war, when she was filled with plans for those red labels. In fact, she was already having the perfumes manufactured there. That coincidence has given rise to a good deal of speculation. But Gilberte Beaux says that the answer to that question is a simple one: Ernest passed the war with his daughter and his wife in southern France, in the Vendée–a part of the country that remained unoccupied territory.
The other obvious candidate is a man named Vincent Roubert–or someone in his laboratory. He had created in 1946 one of the great orris fragrances in history, the long-discontinued and much-lamented Iris Gris. Since Roubert, the head perfumer at Coty, had also created L’Aimant, he would have been one of the few other men capable of creating a fragrance like Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1. The experts say, however, that the scent just doesn’t bear his signature. Gilberte Beaux suggests one other possibility. Those years were difficult and complicated. It is not impossible that the formula for Chanel No. 5 simply found its way into circulation. The mystery of who created Coco Chanel’s red-label perfumes has never been solved conclusively, but it is hard to imagine that Ernest Beaux would have willingly participated in any plan that tore down the prestige of a cherished accomplishment. Whoever crafted it, Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1 was a scent that won many admirers.
The curious thing is that, by 1946, Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1 wasn’t the only version of Chanel No. 5 on the market. Its precursor, Rallet No. 1, was still in production as late as the end of the 1940s. Coty was still producing L’Aimant, the scent based on some version of Ernest Beaux’s original formula, found in the archives when the Coty firm acquired Rallet in the 1920s. There was also, if the legend is true, Guerlain’s Liù, developed in 1929 when the celebrated perfumer Jacques Guerlain was chagrined to learn that his wife was wearing Chanel No. 5. Plus, Les Parfums Chanel still sold its Chanel No. 22, that intensely aldehydic variation on the No. 5 theme. Now, with Mademoiselle Chanel No. 1, Coco Chanel had simply presented another option–the sixth scent like No. 5.
In late 1945 or early 1946, the partners at Les Parfums Chanel introduced a seventh version of the scent. Known as Chanel No. 46, it was released during that emblematic year of victory celebrations. It looked a lot like a return to the old strategy of proliferating fragrance options in the Parfums Chanel numbered lineup. This time, however, there were other complications to consider. Perhaps it was a clever hedge against Coco Chanel’s wartime behavior. No one knew quite how the public would feel about Chanel No. 5 in light of Coco Chanel’s politics and her choice, even now, of German romantic partners. For anyone who wanted the scent of the world’s most famous perfume, Chanel No. 46 was the new postwar option. Among all the variations, it was another scent that imitated Chanel No. 5 very precisely. In the end, however, it existed only briefly.
None of these fragrances was, of course, an exact replica of Chanel No. 5. Each perfumer had taken the concept and worked to improve and reimagine it. Even with Chanel No. 46 there were significant modifications. Yet if they had been simple knockoffs, it hardly would have mattered. What all these new Chanel No. 5 versions testify to is the terrific celebrity of the original product. By the end of the Second World War, Chanel No. 5 was no longer just a perfume. It was a cultural icon, rich with a meaning and symbolism that had little to do any longer with the scent itself or with the woman who had first been inspired to produce it.
The partner
s at Les Parfums Chanel weren’t worried, then, that Coco Chanel’s red-label perfumes would compete with Chanel No. 5. It was already obvious that nothing could rival the fragrance. What they were worried about was Coco Chanel tearing down the prestige of the name. Part of that concern was for the damage she could do by stirring up worries about its quality. But the bigger part of their concern, it was said, was the damage she could do to the name of Chanel itself if her wartime story were laid bare to the international press. Said her friend and biographer Marcel Haedrich, “If one took seriously the few disclosures that Mademoiselle Chanel allowed herself to make about those black years of the occupation21, one’s teeth would be set on edge.”
It was all too easy to imagine Coco Chanel becoming infamous. It would be far better for everyone that she just retire quietly. Forbes magazine reported later that Pierre Wertheimer’s worry was how “a legal fight might illuminate Chanel’s wartime activities and wreck her image–and his business22.” By the late 1950s, even Coco Chanel realized that it would be wiser to pass over the war in silence, and she reputedly paid Walter Schellenberg, one of the principal operatives in the failed diplomatic mission to Berlin23, to suppress any mention of her in his prison-house memoirs. For Coco, however, what Chanel No. 5 represented made letting go of the scent emotionally difficult. Losing control of the fragrance evoked too viscerally the pain and desire tangled up with all those earlier losses. What she needed was to feel that she had conquered a whole set of demons, and Chanel No. 5 was a symbol of it all.
By 1946, both sides were suing each other in courts on two continents, with cases in New York, London, and Paris all moving along inexorably. The partners at Les Parfums Chanel blinked first. They decided that it was better to make peace, at almost any cost. In early May of 1947, the lawyer for Les Parfums Chanel, Claude Lewy, placed a transatlantic telephone call from New York to Paris. “Pierre [Wertheimer],” he told Coco Chanel’s lawyer, “is standing here next to me.24 He is ready to make a trip with me. We can start by seeing you on Saturday, the 17th in the afternoon. We’ll have dinner together. He wants with all his heart to conclude a total and definitive peace with Coco.” On May 17, they did meet in an office on the Champs Elysées, but nothing got resolved by the dinner hour. The negotiations went on late into the night. After an epic eight-hour conference, throughout which Coco Chanel remained insistent, a peace treaty in one of the century’s great entrepreneurial battles was signed.
The Secret of Chanel No. 5 Page 17