My biggest discovery in Paris as a fragrance historian are 2 notebooks from early 30´s of a former lab assistant (and after, a perfumer) at Chanel factory.
They have a beautiful brown ink handwriting and a signature that I checked at ISIPCA with old Chanel papers. All the formulas and trials have clear dates. They contain cosmetic preparations for Chanel and Barbara Gould from night cream and face lotions to lipstick, face powders and so on but also some fragrance formulas for both fine fragrance and cosmetic products. Whithin those 2 notebooks I found some manuscript paper with fragrance formulas and 4 Bourjois formulas written on a typewriting machine (years 1944, 1947, 1952) with all the data needed for the manufacturing.
What is still unclear to me is if the formulas (cosmetic and perfume) are the finished products that Chanel put on the market or some trials before.
On the cosmetic side I was totaly amazed by the formulas from the early 30´s: all of them look very, very simple, I would say rudimentary.
The fragrances in the notebooks are: Sycomor, Une Idee de Chanel, Eau de Cologne No5, and 3 other without any indication + a powder version of No5, Huile au jasmin.
Whether they are the real formulas or just a trial they have a lot of indications about the suppliers of Chanel in the 30´s, the structure of the formula and the raw materials used.
Somewhere the preparation of musk Tonkin tincture at Chanel is described. Beaux prepared 3 (!!!) types of tinctures from the same product (musk Tonkin) used in different ways in the perfumes.
Only by looking at the formula of Eau de Cologne No5 (a cheaper, lighter version of the extrait) from that notebook I can say undoubtly that what we have today on the market (though a very, very good perfume) is a different one (I cannot say better or not) at least from the type of rawmaterials used.
On a different page some perfumes of Chanel and Bourjois are described with notes about their quality and commercial succes. I found interesting the description for Rouge, Beige, Bleu and Magnolia (a totally lost Chanel fragrance that I don´t even know the year of introduction).
I will try to reconstitute or aproximate the Sycomor fragrance which has a very interesting formula though some bases from Chuit Naef (Firmenich today) are no more available and hope to give a review in the near future.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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2 commentaires:
What a fabulous find! I'd be over the moon to have found notes like that.
"On the cosmetic side I was totaly amazed by the formulas from the early 30´s: all of them look very, very simple, I would say rudimentary."
I actually find it unsurprising that the formulas for classic products might be simple. Creating hugely complex formulas with thousands of ingredients is a byproduct of reverse engineering and industrial espionage; it is not, in my opinion, an example of more advanced artistry in perfuming.
In fact, I blame this exaggeratedly complex approach for why so many commercial perfumes smell like variants on the same three chords. Modern perfume has become a lot like pop music - it's a formula that has variations patterned over top. While the simple fragrance blends are simple, simplicity can make it easier to be reasonably unique.
Hello,
Great discovery. I was considering some formulas from the firm Brocard.
Reading your post I can confirm you that some are really very short (lesse than 10 ingredients) even if they were considered as great success mid of the XIXe century in Russia and the rest of Europe.
http://parfum-brocard.blogspot.com
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