December 17, 2012 |
Let us keep this simple. There are several versions of Chanel No 5: Parfum, Eau de Parfum, Eau de Toilette and Eau Première. The Parfum (also known as Extrait) is the 1921 original created by Ernest Beaux. The EDT was created by Beaux in 1924. The Eau de Parfum dates from 1986, and was created by Jacques Polge. Eau Première is the most recent.
So, the Parfum and the EDT are nearly 100 years old, but they don’t feel dusty or antique. No 5 is kooky, glamorous, modern. It is not a powder puff of flowery pinkness (like some 1920s perfumes). There is a burning chic to No 5. It feels deco, there are defined edges.
And the EDT and Parfum (or Extrait) have not changed that much. Certain ingredients are no longer used – it is no longer fashionable to work with civet, for example – but it is beautiful, as an idea, that a perfume can move through time.
“No 5 is alive today,” says Chanel’s Christopher Sheldrake, “because Chanel has defended it from every point of view. The perfumers have worked on the quality of the ingredients. The formula is not the same, but the smell, the signature, is the same. Very few companies have defended their original fragrances.”
It is good to speak to Sheldrake. Prior to joining Chanel, he created many perfumes for Serge Lutens. Some of these are so beautiful he is rightly considered a legendary perfumer. I mention this not because we want to creep around but to make the point that, when we talk about perfume, which can be a vague activity, we have access to someone who knows his stuff.
We meet in the south of France, in Grasse, where Chanel have a relationship with a small farm owned by the Mull family that grows rose and jasmine (alongside geranium and iris). There is a small factory on the farm so the petals, once harvested, can immediately be processed. It is not quite the “Chanel farm”, but it is that kind of idea. It was the only way to get the jasmine they wanted.
“In the 1980s,” says Sheldrake, “we could see jasmine fields in Grasse disappearing. Because of the cost of labour. And the rest of the perfumery world were buying their jasmine from Egypt and India, where it was cheaper, and I won’t say the quality wasn’t as good, but it was different. It smells different. And we decided it was important to maintain the production of jasmine in Grasse. To have the quality we need to maintain the quality of No 5.”
Jasmine, then. Sheldrake has supplied little bottles of perfume absolute. So we can get to grips with the raw ingredients. The Grasse jasmine is deep, sticky and immersive. It draws you in. The Egyptian is sharper and greener. Less sweet.
“The Grasse jasmine is rich,” he says. “Sensual. And jammy. Almost like strawberry jam.”
Grasse, then. In the south of France. A perfect climate for growing things. “And we have perfect soil here,” explains Fabrice Bianchi, of the Mull family. The morning I visit is the rose harvest. The flowers are picked in the first heat of the morning. Thousands of rose bushes are flowering and the air is thick, drugged with scent.
“The dawn. The humidity. The rose. For me, that is key,” says Sheldrake. “This is part of the beauty of the rose – the fresh, watery morning dewness. There is a lovely scene in Dorian Gray when they are lounging in their salon with the windows open to the garden and Wilde is describing the smells of the flowers coming in.”
The rose they grow on the farm is the Centifolia or May rose. “It has a honeyed, or even a honeycomb smell,” says Sheldrake. “There is a great sensuality.”
A rich extraction is taken from the Centifolia; it is used for middle and end notes. And, like the Grasse jasmine, it is immersive.
Gabrielle Chanel said No 5 was “a woman’s perfume with the scent of a woman”. This was the brief she gave Beaux. “It was the first time a perfumer had that sort of brief,” says Sheldrake. “Normally he would be asked for a perfume that smelled of flowers. Gabrielle asked for a fragrance that smelled of woman. She specifically said she wanted it ‘composed’. She wanted a man-made creation. She was asking for something that had a certain abstraction about it. Something that did not exist in nature.”
I always wonder about this “scent” of a woman in No 5. There is a rich, sticky honey to No 5. It is beautiful, but it is not, by any means, innocent. It is sweet. And dripping. Like a woman’s pollen. Again, I would say “immersive”. But the building blocks of No 5…
“Beaux made a very rich fragrance with an enormous amount of flowers – jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang,” says Sheldrake. “And sandalwood, which is beautifully creamy and feminine. And vanilla. And heliotrope, a very powdery floral note in the base note. And to this rich natural smell he added abstraction. He added the aldheydes – the aldheydes were a result of what was happening at the time in modern chemistry. The aldheydes exist in nature – they exist in the peel of lemons and oranges and bergamot and mandarin. And chemistry, at that time, isolated them, synthesised them and synthesised other aldehydes in the same family that do not exist in nature. No 5 was made with ‘about’ five different aldehydes.”
I confess I have never understood the aldehydes in No 5. Beaux, who hailed from Moscow, said they reminded him of the coldness of Sibera. The snow. The ice. The fresh winds.
“These aldehydes give this slightly strident but fresh, synthetic abstraction to this wonderful rich mix of naturals,” says Sheldrake. He hands me a bottle of pure aldehydes to smell. So… Here goes…
Subtle. I would not say “fragrance”. More like subtle toxic assault. You would not eat this. The feeling is chemical.
“That is because they are such pure molecules,” he tells me. “They are like cutting. There’s nothing friendly about them. The aldehydes are very cutting edge. Right on the top of the perfume. Almost an electric current on the top note. And the smell lasts all the way through the fragrance. On the top note they mix and modify the rose, the bergamot, the fresh, freesia-type notes as well – they change them into something that is difficult to recognise. I would say they accompany the rose notes all the way through the fragrance and even blend with the vanilla notes much later.”
I like the fizz of No 5. I sometimes get a sense of champagne. And I know it is a sophisticated scent because she moves in trails and layers, shifting and blurring. Not easily read.
“No 5 is complex because it has the floral notes, the woody notes, the powdery notes and these aldehydes that go all the way through,” says Sheldrake. “And there are a lot of natural ingredients in No 5, and each natural ingredient contains hundreds of substances. All this, combined with the fact No 5 is quite abstract, it is difficult to determine the odour, and on everybody it smells a bit different. It has this complexity where different notes come up more on some people than others. It can smell more powdery on some people, more floral on others, more fresh aldehydic. So I think that is how it works and that is the interesting thing about it. Jacques [Polge] would say that is the mystery of No 5. It has this wonderful mystery. It is very clever. And it has a great sensuality as well.”
I want to know if Sheldrake, when he was a young perfumer, ever tried to pick No 5 apart. “I was in my late twenties when I first looked at No 5. It was extremely difficult to understand how it worked. It was incredible to think how much natural product there was in there. I was thinking how expensive it would be to make. And the aldehydes, dosing the aldehydes by nose. You almost don’t believe it, but you have to put in more and more aldehydes to reach the effect. It is a completely out-of-the-box creation.”
CHANEL NUMBER 5: THE VERSIONS
(with notes from Sheldrake)
Perfume No 5 (also known as Extrait No 5; created by Ernest Beaux in 1921)
The original perfume. The lovely, lovely, magical perfume.
“This is the one we defend.”
Eau de Toilette (created by Ernest Beaux in 1924)
A beautiful scent, I used to think it was a bit peachy, at times. And easy to wear.
“Very long lasting. I think it is woodier. It remains feminine nevertheless, but the woodiness makes it more acceptable for men.” (Quite a few men wear this.)
Eau de Parfum (created by Jacques Polge in 1986)
“An interpretation where the vanilla and sandalwood have been pushed. It’s almost a 1980s interpretation of No 5. It’s closer to the Extrait than the EDT. And is probably our biggest-selling variant of No 5 today. Its very sexy on the skin.”
Eau Première (launched 2009)
“It is an EDP concentration, but it is a complete reworking of the formula. What we did here is we said, ‘If we were to make No 5 today, how would we make it?’ So this is No 5 with all the modern technology available to us and all the new chemistry – all the technology we’ve applied to extracting natural raw materials; all the natural products were cleaned in various ways with molecular or fractional distillation – it’s really a high-tech No 5 for this era. And it is extremely feminine. And I find it suits all ages. I know a lot of women who didn’t wear No 5 before who have found the Eau Première very sexy. Very modern.”
By Tony Marcus
