Chanel No. 5 perfume is introduced in Paris - May 5th, 1921

On this day in 1921, the iconic perfume Chanel No. 5 was sold for the first time at Coco Chanel’s boutique in Paris. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to this Day in History Class,
a show that can't get enough of that sweet smell
of history. I'm Gabe Bluzier, and in this episode we're
talking about one of the most enduring and expensive smells

(00:22):
of the last hundred years, the one and only Chanel
number five. The day was May five, one, the iconic
perfume Chanel number five was sold for the first time

(00:42):
at Coco Chanelle's boutique in Paris. The new scent was
very different from others on the market at the time.
Instead of smelling like just one floral note, Chanel number
five was much more complex. It had notes of jasmine, rose, sandalwood,
and vanilla, among many others. The result was an unusually

(01:03):
abstract scent that didn't relate to just one thing. Instead
of smelling like a specific flower, it smelled clean or fresh,
even a little like soap. The impressionistic nature of the
fragrance was reflected in its name number five. As a
seemingly random digit, it didn't have a clear connotation in

(01:25):
most people's minds, but for Coco Chanel, the number represented everything.
Five was said to be her lucky number, and she
deferred to it in life wherever possible. It was no coincidence, then,
that the fragrance she chose to release was the fifth
sample presented to her. It was also no coincidence that

(01:45):
the fragrance debuted along with her new fashion collection, on
the fifth day of the fifth month of the year.
Gabrielle Chanelle was born on August nineteen, eighteen eighty three,
and the Salmuer Commune in western France. She was the
second of three daughters born to Albert and Jan Chanelle,

(02:07):
a clothing peddler and a laundry woman, respectively. Jen passed
away just before Chanelle's twelfth birthday, at which point her
father sent her and her two sisters to live at
a convent run orphanage in central France. The nuns there
taught Chanelle how to sew, and it's been suggested that
their black and white habits inspired the color contrast that

(02:31):
later became the designer's trademark. Chanelle left the orphanage at
age eighteen and put her sewing skills to use in
a local tailor's shop. She also took up singing and
began performing with her aunt and working class bars and restaurants.
It was during this time that Gabrielle Chanelle reportedly got
her nickname Coco. There are a few versions of the story,

(02:55):
but the most well known is that the name came
from two songs that Chanelle frequently performed, Coco Rico and
Who's Seen Coco? At the Trocadero. Supposedly, the crowd would
demand encores from the singer by shouting Coco Coco until
she reappeared on stage. It's worth noting, though, that Chanelle

(03:16):
herself claimed the nickname was a term of endearment used
by her father, not by drunken crowds. At any rate,
the nickname lasted longer than her singing career. By Chanelle
had left the stage behind and become a licensed milliner,
or maker of women's hats. Her hat shop, called Chanelle Maud,

(03:38):
was located at twenty one Rue Cambonne, in the heart
of Paris. The venture was paid for by Chanelle's lover,
Etienne Bulson, a wealthy textile tycoon who had invited her
to live in Paris with him as his mistress. In
the decade that followed, Chanelle grew her business into a
series of successful boutiques. Gradually, she established herself as a

(04:02):
celebrated fashion designer, famous not only for her inventive clothing designs,
but for her exploits as a larger than life socialite.
She drove around in a blue Rolls Royce and made
no effort to hide her many public romances. In the
early nineteen twenties, Chanelle decided to jump on board a
new trend among fashion houses by designing a signature perfume

(04:25):
to compliment her clothing line. To make it happen, Chanelle
commissioned a prominent perfumer named Ernest Beau. She challenged him
to think outside the box to create a fragrance that
would quote smell like a woman, not like a rose.
Bou worked on the challenge for several months, eventually creating

(04:45):
ten distinct samples to present to Chanelle. Naturally, she picked
number five. However, Chanelle may have been drawn to the
scent for another reason besides its number. The sample she
chose was actually the world's first perfume to feature a
significant dose of alde hydes, synthetic chemicals that make a

(05:06):
sent more intense and long lasting. Perfumers hadn't made much
use of alde hydes, preferring to play it safe with
natural ingredients, but the fragrance that would become Chanelle number
five had an uncommonly high dose of the chemicals. As
the story goes, their inclusion may not have been intentional.

(05:26):
Either Beau or his assistant are believed to have accidentally
added the strong dose to one of Chanelle's samples, as
luck would have it, the fifth one. There's been a
lot of speculation about why Chanelle would be attracted to
the smell of alde hides, but the most widely accepted
theory is that they reminded her of soap and by extension,

(05:48):
of her mother, a laundress. Chanelle never explicitly made that
connection herself, but she did later describe the fragrance as quote,
what I was waiting for a woman's perfume with the
scent of a woman. Before launching Chanelle number five on
May the five, the designer did some impromptu market research

(06:10):
for the perfume. She invited some high society friends to
a popular restaurant on the Riviera and then sprayed the
perfume all around the table. According to legend, every woman
who passed by that afternoon stopped to ask what the
fragrance was and where they could buy it. The answer,
of course, was exclusively at her boutique on Rue Cambon.

(06:34):
Chanel Number five shook up the fragrance industry like no
scent before it. Even the bottle the perfume came in
was groundbreaking, simpler and less ornate than those used by competitors.
The fragrance quickly became a best seller, and it's remained
one for about a century. Today it's one of the
most recognizable perfumes in the world, both in the air

(06:58):
and in its famous bottle. It seems like Chanelle was
right and five really was her lucky number. I'm Gabe
Louisier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you enjoyed the show,
consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t

(07:20):
d i HC Show. You can also rate and review
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I heart media dot com. Thanks, as always the channel
or Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you
for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for

(07:41):
another day in History Class.