Coco at 100

Written by Melissa Mahanes / Artwork by Revi Ferrer

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel came to Paris as the mistress of the textile baron Etienne Balsan in 1909 and set up a millinery boutique under Balsan’s apartment. Chanel was already a phenomenon in French fashion circles by the beginning of the twenties. She had a series of successful boutiques in Paris, Deauville, and Biarritz; she owned a villa in the south of France and drove around in her own blue Rolls Royce.

She wanted to create a scent that could describe the new, modern woman she epitomized and dressed. So, during the late summer of 1920, Chanel went on holiday on the Cote d’Azur with her lover, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. There she learned of a perfumer, a sophisticated and well-read character called Ernest Beaux who had worked for the Russian royal family and lived close by in Grasse, the center of the perfume industry. Beaux was a curious and daring craftsman and took up Chanel’s challenge.

It took him several months to perfect a new fragrance, but eventually, he came up with ten samples and presented them to Chanel. They were numbered one to five and 20 to 24. She chose number five.

It is rumored that the concoction was the result of a laboratory mistake. Beaux’s assistant had added a dose of aldehyde in a quantity never used before. The interesting thing about aldehydes is that one of them smells like soap, a scent that she appreciated from her childhood with a mother that was a laundress.

In keeping with Coco’s reputation for wanting the mostluxurious things in life for her and her clients, it takes one ton of flowers to produce one and a half kilograms of the absolute. At the heart of N°5 is ylang-ylang harvested from Madagascar and Mayotte, Mayrose, a bloom that only flowers for three weeks a year, and jasmine from Grasse—the most luxurious raw ingredient in the world.

Chanel later said, “It was what I was waiting for. A perfume like nothing else. A woman’s perfume, with the scent of a woman.” She invited Beaux and friends to a popular upmarket restaurant on the Riviera to celebrate and decided to spray the perfume around the table. Each woman that passed stopped and asked what the fragrance was and where it came from.“

“That was the first moment that anybody in public smelled Chanel N° 5, and it stopped them in their tracks. That moment consumers were smelling something they had never smelled before; it was an intervention in the history of perfume.” Joyeux anniversaire, N°5!

Revi Ferrer, Gold Chanel No 5, 2021 (Available in 3 sizes: 20” x 28” x 30” x 40”, 40” x 50”) Limited Release HD Metal Print. All released prints are numbered and signed by the artist. Print comes ready to hang with natural aluminum mount. The frame is 3/4” deep, which makes the artwork appear to be floating off the wall. Ships within 10 business days. For custom size orders, please email studio@ineffableart.com / Telephone: (424) 344 0722 Source material: BBC News / Chanel No 5: the Story Behind the Classic Perfume (May 29, 2011)