Ernest Beaux

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Ernest Beaux , around 1921

Ernest Beaux ( Russian Эрнест Бо, born December 8, 1881 in Moscow ; † June 9, 1961 in Paris ) was a Russian and French perfumer who was particularly popular with his creation of " Chanel Nº 5 " (1921), perhaps the most successful fragrance of all time, is known.

Life

Ernest Beaux was the second son of the French perfumer Edouard Beaux, who worked for the important Russian perfume company and the purveyor to the Tsar Alphonse Rallet & Co. in Moscow, which was bought in 1898 by the Grasser company Chiris with around 1,500 employees and 675 products . After finishing school, Ernest Beaux did an apprenticeship as a laboratory assistant in the soap factory of A. Rallet & Co. from 1898–1900 and was then called up for two years of military service in France. In 1902 he returned to Moscow and began his apprenticeship as a perfumer under Rallet's chief perfumer and technical director A. Lemercier, which he completed in 1907 with a promotion to senior perfumer. While his perfumery colleagues at Rallet fled to the French perfume manufacturer Chiris in Grasse, France , with the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1914 , in order to continue working there, Beaux remained in military service from 1914 to 1919 and commanded a prison camp with Bolsheviks on the Kola in the following Russian civil war Peninsula in Murmansk Oblast . After meeting another man on a ship to Norway while fleeing the October Revolution, his first wife divorced him in absentia.

" Bouquet de Catherine "

Ernest Beaux had his first great success in 1912 with the "Bouquet de Napoleon", a flowery cologne . A female counterpart was to follow on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov Tsar dynasty : The »Bouquet de Catherine«, a homage to Catherine the Great . Beaux studied the recently successfully launched " Quelques Fleurs " (Houbigant, 1912), in which Robert Bienaimé was the first to use synthetic aldehydes. Since there was no way for Beaux to find out, for example with a GC-MS coupling, which of the extremely potent aldehydes Bienaimé had used and in what dosage, Beaux experimented with a 1: 1: 1 complex of the aldehydes C-10 / C- 11 / C-12 and discovered that this neutralized the greasiness of the natural rose and jasmine oil. So he alternately increased the proportion of aldehydes and floral notes of " Quelques Fleurs ". The result was launched in 1913 in Moscow by A. Rallet & Co. as the » Bouquet de Catherine « . The initial success was moderate, and since this was ascribed to the German descent of Catherine the Great, the fragrance was renamed "Rallet Nº 1" in 1914. Due to the turmoil of the First World War and the October Revolution , however, »Rallet Nº 1« also had a difficult time in Russia.

Chanel and N ° 5

Beaux came to Chiris at the end of 1919 as one of the last former Rallet employees in their branch in La Bocca (district of Cannes ) and resumed work on " Rallet N ° 1 " to adapt the formula to the perfume raw materials available at Chiris . The series of perfumes that Coco Chanel would later select number 5 from are very likely these attempts at adaptation.

Since the position of chief perfumer at Chiris was occupied by Joseph Robert and there were therefore few opportunities for advancement in the company for Ernest Beaux, the latter tried to get jobs through his contacts with the emigrated Russian nobility. Through the Russian Grand Duke Dmitri Pawlowitsch Romanow (1891-1942), the lover of the up-and-coming French fashion designer Coco Chanel (1883-1971), Beaux was able to arrange a meeting in the late summer of 1920 in neighboring Cannes where he presented his previous work to Mademoiselle Chanel. As a Christmas present for its customers, Chanel chose the bottle with the number 5 from the adaptations of » Rallet N ° 1 «. When Beaux asked her what she would like to call the perfume, she replied: "I launch my collections on the fifth day of the fifth month, the five seems to bring me luck."

Initially only 100 bottles of " Chanel Nº 5 " were made, which were given away for Christmas to the best Chanel customers for free in 1921. The demand was so great that Coco Chanel decided in 1922 to officially launch and sell the fragrance . Beaux left Chiris in 1922 to represent his friend Eugene Charabot in Paris. But " Chanel Nº 5 " went so well that Coco Chanel's business partners, Théophile Bader (also owner of Galeries Lafayette at the time ) and Pierre Wertheimer, Coco Chanel bought the rights on April 4, 1924 and founded Parfums Chanel , their chief perfumer Beaux and for whom he later created many famous perfumes. Since Coco Chanel, who only had the really big breakthrough in 1925 with the little black guy, felt that Wertheimer had taken advantage of her, Beaux fought again with Coco Chanel against their business partners after the Second World War and created competing products for his own creations, including » Mademoiselle Chanel Nº 1 «(1946), which Coco Chanel only sold in her own stores. This led to a number of lawsuits, until Wertheimer finally gave in and increased Chanel's stake, from 1954 even financed the reopening of her haute couture house for fear of Mademoiselle going it alone .

Creations

  • " Bouquet de Napoleon " (1912)
  • " Bouquet de Catherine " (1913)
  • » Rallet Nº 1 « (1914)
  • " Rallet Le Gardenia " (1920)
  • » Chanel Nº 5 « (1921)
  • » Chanel Nº 22 « (1922/1926)
  • " Cuir de Russie " (1924)
  • " Gardénia " (1925)
  • » Bois des Îles « (1926)
  • " Soir de Paris " (1929)
  • » Kobako « (1936)
  • » Mademoiselle Chanel Nº 1 « (1946)
  • » Mademoiselle Chanel Nº 2 « (1946)
  • " Premier Muguet " (1955)

Worth mentioning

  • According to legend, the scent of the fragrances is due to a mishap: an assistant added ten times more aldehydes to the mixture than ordered by Beaux. However, since the rose-jasmine accord is perfectly balanced with the aldehyde complex, it is much more likely that the composition is the result of systematic studies.

literature

  • Andrea Hurton: the eroticism of perfume. History and practice of beautiful fragrances , Eichborn Verlag Frankfurt am Main (1991) ISBN 3-8218-1299-0 .
  • Philip Kraft, Christine Ledard, Philip Goutell: From Rallet N ° 1 to Chanel N ° 5 versus Mademoiselle Chanel N ° 1 , Perfumer and Flavorist 2007 , Vol. 32 (Oct.), pp. 36-48.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Philip Kraft, Christine Ledard, Philip Goutell: From Rallet Nº 1 to Chanel Nº 5 versus Mademoiselle Chanel Nº 1 , Perfumer and Flavorist 2007 , Vol. 32 (Oct.), pp. 36-48.
  2. ↑ Joachim Laukenmann: It smells like a remake. Chanel Nº5 was created from a flopped Russian perfume , Sunday newspaper from September 30, 2007, p. 80.
  3. ↑ Andrea Hurton: Eroticism of perfume. History and practice of beautiful fragrances , Eichborn Verlag Frankfurt am Main (1991) ISBN 3-8218-1299-0 .
  4. ↑ Liz Smith: Fashion: On the scent of a legend , The Times (1987).
personal data
SURNAME Beaux, Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian perfumer
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1961
Place of death Paris