perfume Chanel No. 5, a century

  A fragrance that embodies every great movement of the avant-garde since the First World War? This is a high demand, nor that a new exhibition, which opened in Paris last weekend pleased to announce. Titled Culture Chanel (I know, only in France), the exhibition is really to show a fairly serious attempt as Chanel No. 5 perfume, the intersection between art, music, fashion, design and change social dramas after 1918.

Started in 1921, it was undoubtedly a radical perfume. On the one hand he was the first synthetic aldehydes. This does not seem romantic, but Chanel shoot the heady androgyny of the Jazz Age, was their first fragrance to smell quite modern. As always, she was ahead of the curve. The hipster, Victor Margeuritte novel about a young woman who was her boyfriend cheating on her discover chooses to live his life under the conditions of a man - Several fans and hair cut - has caused a stir when it was published in 1923. In many ways it could have been written for Coco.

Chanel No. 5 gets own show

As an androgynous scent that was - at least by the standards of that time. This meant not only that dominate floral notes, musk and no woozy irresistible. The only way his accomplice Ernest Beaux, dashing from pre-revolutionary Moscow and famous "nose", convinced to achieve was with aldehydes, which allowed him to create, to perfume it a garden in all its complexity - and what's more, as " in the shade. "

Chanel, who did not want any flowers in their own juice, and finally chose the value of a bouquet with jasmine, iris and rose - even 77 ingredients, I urge you to identify, because true to the promise of fine, they are perfectly mixed. It was the fifth version of the beautiful. And number 5

Or was it a different explanation for the name? Five Chanel was important for many reasons. For a modern woman, she was remarkably attached charms and symbols. Five is important in Hinduism and Buddhism. In addition, Igor Stravinsky, who had come in his house outside Paris, in 1920, more than a year, he composed a collection of short pieces for children called The Five Fingers while he was there.

A Brief History of Chanel No.5

A good deal of Cubism direct and bold refutation, decorated bottles "feminine" ubiquitous categorically at the time - then there was this minimalist bottle, was a classic. She borrowed the character of leaflets Dadaists produced at the time, rewrote the black lines and the effect of binding on the label of Bauhaus, Picasso and office proofreading by Marcel Proust, which he did by and pasting passages from the old. The origin of the box was beige and black, because Coco, beige is the color of nature.

Nicole Kidman Chanel No 5 ad in 2006, and a bottle of design Dali Photo: Philippe Halsman / Magnum Photos

Beige Chanel become white when they realized to keep up with demand for its fragrance in its four branches they have to ensure the production would industrialize. It is ironic that Coco, who's otherwise good time deleted inspiration notebook when they. Onto the hook with a Nazi officer during the Second World War, eventually going into business with a Jewish family But that's what happens when they signed a deal with Paul and Peter Wertheimer, 1924, with whom she still one of the founders of the Society of perfume houses perfumes Chanel, the world's most successful.

It was at this time that the plug of an emerald was fed into shape it was robust for distribution abroad just before the start.

So, yes, while the exhibition is a clever piece of marketing, it also works as a social history. If you go, do not forget a meeting later book on the floor of the workshop. You need the booklet - the windows, as casually as glass with the bottle and minimalist in its observations. But you have enough time to go to - it is open from 11am to midnight clock.

The opening was packed. It seems the more we pulls away from his life, the more. Certainly played a big role in the lives of many great personalities of the past 90 years, No. 5.

Listen Marilyn Monroe on Chanel No. 5

An enlightened patron who was wearing his favorite poems from her, Coco was a faithful friend of Cocteau, Picasso and Dali. It's a nod to the show in the garden of La Pausa, their villa in the South of France, which recently came on the market for € 33 million suns. I hope to buy Wertheimer, even if only to avoid, does not transform skin into a seedy night club for billionaires lizard.

It is that Chanel had a thing for millionaires, but she was also a feminist, for example, not a dogma, a proto-Green, an early proponent of world exports, and one of the first designers to star in his own ads (natch Tom Ford ). It also has the most careful I met spray regime completed. According to the brochure of the exhibition: "Every morning, a young assistant evaporate No. 5 at the entrance to the building of his kingdom, in the Rue Cambon in Paris, a moment before walking Mademoiselle Chanel, warned of his impending arrival by the doorman at the Ritz. The scent stays on the stairs and mirrors in her apartment. sprays also # 5 in breathing in his house. "

Each coal No. 5 Now there is a product waiting for a start developed.

"Culture Chanel" at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris until 5 June Free entry