New York Times Literary Treat of the Week....

Mazzeo, Tilar J. The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume. Harper/HarperCollins.

Some cannot remember a time when its artful television commercials did not invite its viewers to “share the fantasy.” Chanel No. 5 came about in the right era to benefit from American advertising’s world impact. Coco Chanel did her own test marketing at a 1921 dinner in Cannes by spraying the fifth sample provided by the perfumer Beaux around her table and pretending not to notice it. Chanel wanted a scent that combined the cleanliness of the orphanage where she spent her childhood with the lush and sensual atmosphere of her dancer days at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Mazzeo chronicles how rocky dealings with No. 5’s distributors plus a world war resulted at one point in two versions of the product said to contain the “scent of a woman.”

For more about Coco Chanel, Merrick Library has the following book in its collection:

Chanel / edited by Harold Koda, Andrew Bolton and Olivier Saillard. Yale University Press, 2005.

And these movies:

Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky- starring Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen.
Coco Before Chanel- starring Audrey Tautou.

Reviewed by Librarian, Bob.