The Secret of Chanel No. 5 (33 page)

Perfume, it's the most important thing. As Paul Valéry said it:
“A badly perfumed woman doesn't have a future.”

—Coco Chanel, interview with Jacques Chazot, produced as “Dim Dam Dom,” director Guy Job, 1969

The most mysterious, the most human thing is smell.
That means that your physique corresponds to the other's.

—Coco Chanel, quoted in Claude Baillén,
Chanel Solitaire
(New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 146

1
“Chanel No. 5 rated ‘most seductive scent' in poll of women”:
Sherryl Connelly, “Chanel No. 5 perfume rated ‘most seductive scent' in poll of women,”
New York Daily News,
December 2, 2009, www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/shopping_guide/2009/12/02/2009–12–02_chanel_no_5_perfume_is_tops_with_women.html.

2
“Marilyn Monroe never had trouble attracting men”:
“The Secret to Bagging Your Dream Man? Why, Chanel No. 5, Of Course … One in Ten Were Wearing Seductive Fragrance When They ‘Met the One,' “
Daily Mail,
December 1, 2009, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article–1232047/The-secret-bagging-dream-man-Why-Chanel-No5-course–One-wearingseductive-fragrance-met-one.html#ixzz0fQVxXLLB.

3
“it appear[ed] her colourful love life may have been down to a simple choice”:
“The Secret to Bagging Your Dream Man?”
Daily Mail,
December 1, 2009.

4
the starlet famously quipped that all she wore to bed at night were a few drops of Chanel No. 5:
Paul Kremmel, ed.,
Marilyn Monroe and the Camera
(London: Schirmer Art Books, 1989), 15; “Something for the Boys,”
Time,
Monday, August 11, 1952. Other versions of the quote say “A drop of Chanel No. 5.”

5
“for getting beyond it to boyfriend status”:
“The Secret to Bagging Your Dream Man,”
Daily Mail,
December 1, 2009.

6
One in ten claimed they met Mr. Right while wearing the iconic perfume:
Ibid.

7
according to the French government, a bottle of the world's most famous perfume sells:
“News From France,”
Ambassade de France aux États Unis
6, no. 12 (December 6, 2006), http://ambafrance-us.org/IMG/pdf/nff/News FromFrance%2006_12.pdf; other sources claim that sales are closer to one bottle of the fragrance every fifty-five seconds, e.g., “Chanel No. 5 Most Iconic Perfume,”
The Telegraph,
November 27, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3530343/Chanel-No.-5-most-iconic-perfume.html.

8
A few years later, the ranks of the super rich had swelled by more than 700 percent:
On the rising concentration of wealth in the United States during the 1920s, see, for example, Larry Samuel,
Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture
(New York: ACOM, 2009).

9
department stores, another phenomenon of this enticing new commercial era:
On the history of the department store, see Richard Longstreath,
The American Department Store Transformed, 1920–1960
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); Jan Whitaker,
Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class
(New York: St. Martin's, 2006); Jacques du Closal,
Les Grands Magasins: Cent Ans Après
(Paris: Clotard et Associés, 1989).

10
Babe Ruth led the New York Yankees to three World Series titles:
For the cultural history of the 1920s, see Lucy Moore,
Anything Goes: A Biography of the 1920s
(New York, Overlook Press, 2010); Edmund Wilson,
The American Earthquake: A Chronicle of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the Dawn of the New Deal
(New York: DaCapo Press, 1996); Malcolm Cowley,
Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s
(New York: Penguin, 1994); Jean-Claude Baker,
Josephine Baker: The Hungry Heart
(New York: Cooper Square, 2001); and Michael K. Bohn,
Heroes and Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports
(Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2009).

11
Chandler Burr reminds us … spoken of in reverent tones simply as
le monstre–
the monster:
Chandler Burr,
The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York
(New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 143.

12
“It's unbelievable! It's not a fragrance; it's a goddamn cultural monument, like Coke”:
Ibid.

1
at nearly four hundred dollars an ounce:
At the time of press, a .25-ounce bottle of Chanel No. 5 retails for $95, www.chanel.com/en_US/fragrance-beauty/Fragrance-N"5-N"5-PARFUM–88173.

2
Gabrielle Chanel's peasant roots:
Several biographies explore the details of Coco Chanel's early life, and I have drawn on the following source material throughout this book: Pierre Galante,
Mademoiselle Chanel,
trans. Eileen Geist and Jessie Wood (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973); Axel Madsen,
Chanel: A Woman of Her Own
(New York: Henry Holt, 1990); Frances Kennett,
Coco: The Life and Loves of Gabrielle Chanel
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1989); Edmonde Charles-Roux,
Chanel,
trans. Nancy Amphoux (London: Harvill Press, 1995); Claude Baillén,
Chanel Solitaire,
trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Quadrangle, 1973); Misia Sert,
Misia and the Muses: The Memoirs of Misia Sert
(New York: John Day Company, 1953); and Isabelle Fiemeyer,
Coco Chanel: Un Parfun
[sic]
de Mystère
(Payot: Paris, 1999).

3
saint Étienne d'Obazine: La Vie de Saint Étienne Fondateur et Premier Abbé du Monastère d'Obazine,
ed. Monsignor Denéchau (Tulle, France: Jean Mazeyrie, 1881).

4
Coco Chanel once later said that fashion was architecture:
Haedrich,
Coco Chanel,
252.

5
Charles-Roux always believed that: “Whenever [Coco] began yearning for austerity, for the ultimate in cleanliness”:
Charles-Roux,
Chanel,
43.

6
Bernard of Clairvaux, who founded the Cistercian movement:
See Bernard of Clairvaux,
Sermons on the Song of Songs,
trans. Kilian Walsh (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications / Liturgical Press, 1976).

7
É
tienne had made a mission of planting richly scented flowers everywhere in the empty ravines and wastes around his abbeys:
See
La Vie de Saint Étienne Fondateur et Premier Abbé du Monastère d'Obazine;
the life specifies that Etienne planted the hills with “flowers yellow and rose,” 233.

8
stone staircase at Aubazine that led to the children's bedchambers:
Madsen,
Chanel: A Woman of Her Own,
17.

9
It was a desperately unhappy childhood:
Baillén,
Chanel Solitaire,
167.

10
it remained a guarded and shameful secret:
Charles-Roux,
Chanel,
43.

11
the aroma of sheets boiled in copper pots sweetened with dried root of iris:
Ibid.

12
Aubazine was also filled with symbols and the mysterious power of numbers:
Fiemeyer,
Coco Chanel,
74; my thanks to Madame Michèle Millas and to the staff and sisters at the abbey of Aubazine for their hospitality and assistance.

13
Double columns reflected the duality of body and spirit, earth and heaven:
Aubazine, local historical information sheet, courtesy Michèle Millas; the information on the symbolic importance of architectural numerology that follows also refers to this source material.

14
these are the churches most closely associated with the occult mysteries of the Knights Templar:
See Walid Amine Salhab,
The Knights Templar of the Middle East
(San Francisco: Red Wheel, 2006).

15
“Cistercian cathedrals, churches, and abbeys … are built on measures … which equal more or less [the] Golden Ratio of Pythagoras”:
Salhab,
The Knights Templar of the Middle East,
158.

16
“No. 5 was her fetishistic number from childhood”:
Fiemeyer,
Coco Chanel,
74.

17
“she engraved it in the earth … with a branch she had picked up”:
Ibid.

18
name “'Cistercian,' and that of [its] first monastery, Citeaux, both come from the word
cistus,
of the Cistaceae rockrose”:
Karen Ralls,
Knights Templar Encyclopedia: The Essential Guide to the People, Places, Events, and Symbols of the Order of the Temple
(Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2007), 54.

19
Alexandre Dumas brought them to the popular vaudeville stage a generation later:
Alexandre Dumas,
La Dame aux Camélias
(1847) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Giuseppe Verdi,
La Traviata
(1853) (New York: G. Schirmer, 1986), libretto; Beverly Seaton,
The Language of Flowers: A History
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995).

20
“La Dame aux Camélias,”
she once said, “was my life, all the trashy novels I'd fed on”:
Baillén,
Chanel Solitare,
180.

21
It was the shape, she always said, of infinite possibility:
Linda Grant, “Coco Chanel, la dame aux camélias,”
London Telegraph,
July 29, 2007, www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/stellamagazine/3360675/Coco-Chanel-la-dameaux-camelias.html.

1
In just another few months, the painter Henri Matisse and his compatriots:
See Pat Shipman,
Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2008); Rachel Shteir,
Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005); Alfred Marquet,
From Fauvism to Impressionism
(New York: Rizzoli, 2002).

2
dance halls like La Rotonde:
Charles-Roux,
Chanel,
82.

3
selling lingerie and hosiery at a boutique called
À Sainte Marie
in Moulins:
Charles-Roux,
Chanel,
56.