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Summary
Summary
"Who knew that such a tiny bottle housed so many secrets?" --Michael Tonello, author of Bringing Home the Birkin
Tilar J. Mazzeo, author of the New York Times bestseller The Widow Clicquot (an Amazon Best of the Month book in October 2008) returns with a captivating history of the world's most famous, seductive, and popular perfume: Chanel No. 5. Mazzeo's sweeping story of the iconic scent (known as "le monstre" in the fragrance industry) stretches from Coco Chanel's early success to the rise of the seminal fragrance during the 1950s to the confirmation of its bestseller status in today's crowded perfume market.
"Here is the life of one of the 20th century's most interesting and deeply complicated women, a fascinating cultural history, and the story of an extraordinary perfume." --Chandler Burr, New York Times scent critic and author of The Perfect Scent
Author Notes
Tilar J. Mazzeo is a New York Times bestselling author of books that include The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate Story of the World's Most Famous Perfume, and The Hotel On The Place Vendôme: Life, Death, And Betrayal At The Hôtel Ritz In Paris. She also writes extensively on wine for the media and is the author of The Back Lane Wineries of Napa, The Back Lane Wineries of Sonoma, and the forthcoming guide to The Back Lane Wineries of the Pacific Northwest.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, and today writes narrative nonfiction and memoir on the history of war, women, and luxury. She teaches English as the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and teaches narrative nonfiction at writer's workshops in the Canadian Gulf Islands of British Columbia.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Mazzeo's (The Widow Cliquot) cloying and repetitive history of Chanel No. 5 finds the perfume's phenomenal success to have occurred in spite of its creator's efforts. Mazzeo reveals that the now instantly recognizable scent of heavy jasmine, rose, and musk combined with a good dose of "unblemished whiteness" produced by synthetic aldehydes was not actually invented by Coco Chanel in 1920, at the height of her fashion fame. In fact, she and her lover at the time, dispossessed Russian aristocrat Dmitri Pavlovich, recreated the scent from a perfume that had originally been fashioned for a Romanov dynasty celebration in 1914, le Bouquet de Catherine. According to Mazzeo, the newly fashioned Chanel No. 5 (Coco's lucky number) embodied the saintly mysteries of her childhood orphanage at Aubazine, the heady sensuality of her early career as a demimondaine, and the bracing clean lines of her modern design. A woman "should smell like a woman and not like a flower," she famously declared. In this fascinating story, Mazzeo depicts painstakingly how signing away her rights to the industrialist Wertheimer brothers in 1924 prompted perfume sales to soar worldwide, especially when the brothers were able to remove production to New Jersey during WWII. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot (2008) turns her attention to the world's most iconic perfume and the fascinating woman behind it.Much has already been written about Coco Chanel, and with good reasonnot only because of her undeniable legacy, but also because of a life story usually viewed through the lens of 19th-century bildungsroman novels. Abandoned by her parents to a convent, she was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge, a mistress to the French aristocracy and an acquaintance of ruined Russian royaltyall while building the greatest fashion empire in the world. Chanel No. 5, her signature fragrance, was only a tiny part of this remarkable life. However, in the skilled hands of cultural historian Mazzeo (English/Colby Coll.), it becomes a magnificent window through which to understand her and her milieu.The author argues that the scent was the crown of Chanel's career and that it weaves together many of the obscure pieces of her life in an intriguing wayfrom the passion for cleanliness that she inherited from the nuns that raised her to the seductive musks she picked up in the dressing rooms as a burlesque dancer to the almost forgotten Moscow perfumer that she learned about from a lover exiled on the Riviera. Chanel No. 5, "the scent of beautiful extravagance," is also a perfect example of Chanel's remarkable business sense. In explaining how decisions like using a simple apothecary bottle in place of a more ornate design or giving out samples to friends at a pre-launch party paved the road for the perfume's market dominance, Mazzeo illuminates the greater success of the Chanel line as a whole.Impeccable research and crafting make a seemingly narrow topic feel infinitely important.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this biography of a scent, Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot, 2008), painstakingly follows the scattered breadcrumb trail left by the illustrious Chanel No. 5 (somewhere in the world, a bottle is sold every 30 seconds). So doing, she takes readers all over France, to the U.S,, Germany, and Imperial Russia, to explain the far-flung origins and unprecedented success of the perfume the author calls a cultural monument. In something akin to revealing the man behind the curtain in Oz, Mazzeo carefully uncovers the revered designer Coco Chanel's complicated relationship with her creation, at once very personal yet belonging to women the world over, and exposes the tenuous (and, during WW II, downright scandalous) business partnership she maintained with her colleagues at Les Parfums Chanel. Readers may find themselves wishing the volume came accompanied by the endlessly described fragrance in its enigmatic art-deco bottle, but this is one case where historical fact eclipses the legend and lore of the object itself there's much, much more than meets the nose to discover in these pages.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Mazzeo's (English, Colby Coll.; The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It) "unauthorized biography of a scent" unearths the roots of the creation and fame of Coco Chanel's famous perfume, which still polls as the "most seductive scent" almost 90 years after it went on the market. Although Coco Chanel serves as a lens for the book, readers get a look at the explosion of the French perfume industry after World War I, the importance of American consumerism in skyrocketing perfume sales, and Chanel No. 5's place in 20th-century history. Mazzeo's lush prose covers relevant aspects of Coco Chanel's life, from the stark beauty of the orphanage where she was raised to the glamour and luxury of her adulthood, to the scents that wove through her life and shaped the development of her signature perfume. However, the book never bogs down in the details-despite the extensive research showcased in the bibliography-and a smooth pacing keeps it moving along at a fast clip. VERDICT This work is definitely recommended to lovers of 20th-century cultural history, Coco Chanel, and, of course, the world's best-selling perfume.-Crystal Goldman, San Jose St. Univ. Lib., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Part I Coco Before Chanel No. 5 | |
| 1 Aubazine and the Secret Code of Scent | p. 3 |
| 2 The Pretty Perfumer | p. 13 |
| 3 The Scent of Betrayal | p. 23 |
| 4 An Education in the Senses | p. 37 |
| 5 The Prince and the Perfumer | p. 47 |
| 6 The Birth of a Modern Legend | p. 59 |
| Part II Love and War | |
| 7 Launching Chanel No. 5 | p. 75 |
| 8 The Scent with a Reputation | p. 83 |
| 9 Marketing Minimalism | p. 99 |
| 10 Chanel No. 5 and the Style Moderne | p. 111 |
| 11 Hollywood and the Great Depression | p. 119 |
| 12 A Broken Partnership | p. 131 |
| 13 In the Shadow of the Ritz | p. 139 |
| 14 Coco at War | p. 151 |
| 15 Coco Plays the Numbers | p. 165 |
| Part III The Life of an Icon | |
| 16 An Icon of the 1950s | p. 181 |
| 17 The Art of Business | p. 193 |
| 18 The End of Modern Perfumery | p. 205 |
| Afterword | p. 213 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 219 |
| Notes | p. 223 |
| Bibliography | p. 261 |
| Index | p. 269 |
