Chanel formulas - news

Back from hollyday I had some time to analyse my latest discovery from Chanel and have some conclusions.

Most of the formulas are not trials but the production formulas - from 5 liters to 40 liters of concentrate. Checking the amount of raw materials used I can say without doubt that they are the true products put on the market in the early 30's. Some of them have a pen check mark, usualy put after weighting. Also the listing order of raw materials is not the usual one in creation (order of volatility, family, etc) but the order used in the lab for compounding.
The formulas I have are:
- (hand written) a night cream from 1929 with the signature of Ernest Beaux
- (hand written) 2 Sycomor fragrance formula (the same just multiplied for a different final amount) Ernest Beaux
- (hand written) a formula by the same Ernest Beaux (with no header). Looking at the products it seems to be No 5 extrait version. I will check in the lab the formula to be sure.
- Rouge (a very rare fragrance from Chanel) formula (hand written, but not Ernest Beaux)
- 2 notebooks from 1930 and 1931 with more than 50 (!!!) formula of cosmetic products with both composition, fragrance, method and for some of them additional notes and comments. Powder fragrances are also presented (Une Idee de Chanel), Huile au jasmin, Huile a la Tubereuse, etc.
- (typemachine) No5 Eau deCologne, Bourjois Fragrances (Mais Oui, Glamour, one Eau de Cologne, for the first 2 Extrait, Eau de Cologne-Lotion for France, Italy, New York - not the same formula, slightly modification) with lab codes, bases and codes, a lot of refferences.
- (typemachine) coded fragrances: 2 aldehydics, one very animal-tobacco, one woody;
- (hand written) 2 Eau de Cologne, one aldehydic unidentified, 1 woody unidentified (they are not written by Ernest Beaux)

That's in a short way the formulas I found. The most precious for me are the first ones, written by Ernest Beaux. If the misterious one is No 5, wellll that will be my happiest day. A Chanel No 5 hand written by Ernest Beaux is not a piece of paper to find everywhere.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

The Perfume Museum in Grasse reopens

A news from the french luxury magazine ABC LUXE:

"Après deux ans de fermeture et de travaux, le Musée international de la parfumerie de Grasse va très prochainement accueillir de nouveaux visiteurs. Les travaux vont doubler sa superficie qui sera portée à 3 000 m² et qui rendront le musée plus accessible. Le parcours muséographique invitera les visiteurs à découvrir l'histoire de la parfumerie, de ses prémices à nos jours, sur les cinq continents. Quelque 5 000 objets seront exposés dans plusieurs salles dédiées aux expositions et aux conférences. Un lieu de restauration, des salles pédagogiques et d'animation, des ateliers ouverts à tous et un centre de documentation/bibliothèque complètent l'équipement. L'Association pour le rayonnement du Musée international de la parfumerie (ARMIP) présidé par Jean-Claude Ellena participe aussi financièrement à son développement."

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Biggest discovery: Chanel formulas book

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.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Sylvaine Delacourte - a perfumer?

Here you have an interview in french of Sylvaine Delacourte, director of creation an Guerlain.
She says she is a perfumer (really????) and she explains how she "created" Instant and Art de la Matiere fragrances. She forgets to mention all other real perfumers responsible for those fragrances !
I´ve already seen some cases when an evaluator says he is the actual creator of the fragrance. As a perfumer I totally disagree with this kind of position!

Beside that, the interview is nice and shows the beautiful Guerlain store in Paris.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Allure Homme Sport Cologne Sport

The most stupid name I've found this year. Why to do a sport version of an already existent sport version ? I hope Chanel will not go on the same line as Dior airport fragrances ! Doing cheap and light version of an already light perfume... after the brilliant Exclusives.
Shame on you Chanel.
By the way Chanel (the cosmetic-fragrance) seems to have some economical problems this year. They decided to cut jobs on their factory (Pantin) and today a strike is organised.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Christophe Laudamiel interview in P&F

This month issue of PF has a 4 pages interview with the perfumer Christophe Laudamiel about the Mugler coffret. The interview is very kooool and I love his ideas. Unfortunatelly the presentation of the perfumes seems rather a marketing copy paste with the same language and ideas you offten see on the Internet. I would have preffered a rather insight view and more "perfumery" approach, more realistic in terms of raw materials.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Le Labo is now in Paris !

On monday the trendy store Colette presented their new "fragrance corner" dedicated to Le Labo ( just near the stairs). All the fragrances were presented and a nice girl prepared the "fresh" perfumes to the clients. An interesting aspect: the Chanel idea with the ambret seed note and the rose base they used seem very close to the previous released Le Labo fragrance.
The same could be said about the orris note.
The most interesting fragrance for me, at a first glance, seems to be Patchouly 24.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art

Press article about me

A new article - interview about my work in Paris has been published in the well known Romanian newspaper - Jurnalul national.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art