Ernest Beaux

Ernest Beaux (8 December 1881 – 9 June 1961)

Ernest Beaux (December 8, 1881 – June 9, 1961), was a Russian and French perfumer best known for creating Chanel No. 5, perhaps the world's most famous perfume.

Family background

Ernest Beaux's grandfather, Jean-Joseph Beaux, was a soldier in Napoleon's army. Taken prisoner near Moscow, he remained in Russia after his release. During the 1830s he was a member of a theater troupe associated with the Imperial Theater in Saint Petersburg.

Jean-Joseph Beaux had two sons, Edouard and Hippolyte, both of whom went into commerce rather than follow their father in the theater.

Edouard Beaux had two sons, Edouard and Ernest. Beginning as a clerk with the Scotch-Russian Moscow trading house of Muir & Merrilees, Edouard (Edouardovich), Ernest's older brother, joined A. Rallet & Co., ultimately becoming a member of the board and Deputy Administrator.

Career

Ernest Beaux was born in Moscow, Russia, the second son of the French perfumer Edouard Beaux, who worked for Alphonse Rallet & Co. of Moscow, at the time the most important Russian perfume house and purveyor of the courts of Imperial Russia. In 1898, A. Rallet and Company was sold with about 1500 employees and 675 products to the French perfume house Chiris of La Bocca, France. That year, Beaux finished his primary education, and from 1898–1900 made an apprenticeship as laboratory technician in the soap works of Rallet. After his obligatory 2 years military service in France, he returned to Moscow in 1902, where he started his perfumery training at Rallet under the guidance of their technical director A. Lemercier. He finished perfumery education in 1907 with his promotion to senior perfumer, and was elected member of the board of directors.

In 1912 Russia celebrated the centennial of the Battle of Borodino, the turning point in Napoleon's Russian ambitions. For this celebration Beaux created the fragrance "Bouquet de Napoleon," a floral Eau de Cologne, for Rallet. It proved to be a major commercial success, his first.

The following year, 1913, marked the tercentenary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty. To follow up on his "Bouquet de Napoleon" success, Beaux created a now lost fragrance, the "Bouquet de Catherine" honoring Catherine the Great. This fragrance is not to be confused with a fragrance from Brocard, Rallet's chief competitor in Russia, called "The Empress's Favorite Bouquet" and which later evolved into the Soviet version, "Red Moscow."

"Bouquet de Catherine" was inspired by Robert Bienaime's 1912 "Quelques Fleurs" for Houbigant. "Quelques Fleurs" made use of a newly synthesized and somewhat unstable aldehyde (C-12 MNA) for its top note and it is considered by some to be one of the first "modern" perfumes. "Bouquet de Catherine" was created out of Beaux's fascination with Bienaime's use of this aldehyde and his own desire to conquer this new and difficult aroma molecule.

"Bouquet de Catherine" was not a marketing success, perhaps due to Catherine the Great's German heritage at a time of rising tensions between Russia and Germany which would lead, in 1914, to World War I. While born and raised in Russia, Beaux's French heritage brought him into the French army and, while it was generally expected that this war would last no more than a few months, Beaux was not released from military service until 1919, having by this time seen service in the infantry fighting against Germany and then as an intelligence officer and interrogator at an Allied prison camp at the Kola Peninsula at the Murmansk Oblast during the Russian Civil War.

While serving in the French military, Beaux's perfumer colleagues at Rallet fled during Russia's october revolution to La Bocca, France, to continue working with Chiris. In 1919 Beaux, released now from the army, settled in Paris but continued to have a relationship with the former Rallet employees at La Boca.

Chanel No. 5

In 1913 Beaux's wife had given birth to their son, Edouard. Beaux had converted to the Orthodox faith in order to marry Iraïde de Schoenaich. During the Russian Civil War, Iraïde, with the couple's infant son, escaped from Russia via Finland and after suffering two months of dangers and hardships arrived by boat in France. During her wartime separation from Beaux, Iraïde had become involved with another man with whom she was now deeply in love. Beaux divorced her taking custody of their son. Iraïde, moving to Nice to work with her lover, remained faithful to him until his death. Beaux later remarried and had a daughter, Madeleine, by his second wife.

During these years of disruption between 1914 and 1919 it is believed that the "Bouquet de Catherine" was reworked into Rallet No.1 In France now in 1919, Beaux continued working on »Rallet N°1« to adapt the formula to the perfumery raw materials available at Chiris and to reduce the price of the formula. The series from which Coco Chanel later selected her famous "No.5" was most probably these adaptation trials of »Rallet N°1«.

Coco Chanel and the N°5

At that time, Joseph Robert was the chief perfumer at Chiris and since there were little prospects of promotion for Beaux, he tried to use his contacts to the emigrated Russian nobility to get new projects. With the help of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (1891–1941), the lover of the rising couturier Coco Chanel (1883–1971), he could in the late summer of 1920 arrange a meeting in Cannes where he presented his current and former works. Intended as a Christmas present for he best clients Chanel chose the bottle No. 5 from the adaptation trials on »Rallet N°1«.When Beaux asked her how she wanted to name that scent, she replied: „I always launch my collection on the 5th day of the 5th months, so the number 5 seems to bring me luck – therefore, I will name it Nº 5". Initially only 100 flacons of »Chanel Nº 5« were produced, which she gave away on Christmas 1921 for free to her best clients. However, soon the demand for further supply was such that she decided to launch the perfume officially for sale in her shops in 1922. In 1922, she also launched a second fragrance from the two numbered series of bottles that Beaux had presented her, and which were numbered one through five, and twenty through twenty-four: »Chanel Nº 22«, the bottle no. 22 from the second series. But as this did worse than »Nº 5« it was withdrawn and only relaunched in 1926.

Beaux left Chiris in 1922 to head a sales agency for his friend Eugene Charabot in Paris. However, »Chanel Nº 5« did so well that Bader and Wertheimer, owners of Galeries Lafayette, bought the rights to if from Coco Chanel on April 4, 1924, and founded Parfums Chanel for which they hired Ernest Beaux as chief perfumer. In his new functiom Beaux created many famous perfumes until he retired in 1954. His successor as chief perfumer of Perfumes Chanel was Henri Robert. Beaux died in his Paris apartment in 1961, and the church in which his funeral was held was completely decorated in roses.

Controversies

Since Coco Chanel's breakthrough as couturier only took place in 1925 with her design of the Little black dress, she felt taken advantage of by Wertheimer, and after World War II fought with Beaux against her own perfumes in creating competitive fragrances under her own name, for instance »Mademoiselle Chanel Nº 1« (1946), sold exclusively in her own shops. In France this was prohibited by judicial action for counterfeiting, but Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and Neiman Marcus in Texas kept distributing, and when customers reacted puzzled, Wertheimer gave in and raised Coco Chanels share in the company. In 1947, Wertheimer and Chanel made peace, and when Chanel wanted to resurrect her couture house, he even backed her up financially. "Although she made a fortune on the perfume, throughout her lifetime she was convinced that the deal had been heavily weighted in favor of the perfumer and that she had been cheated out of a huge sum of money,"

His former employer Chiris was not happy to Beaux leave with the formula to Perfumes Chanel, and thus asked Vincent Roubert, who had replaced Beaux at Chiris, to make in 1926 and own adaptation of the »Bouquet de Catherine«, which actually was going back even to Rallet Perfumes. The result was »L' Aimant« (Coty, 1926), which initially indeed threatened the success of »Chanel Nº 5«. »L' Aimant« (Coty, 1926) was a near copy of »Chanel Nº 5«, but Perfumes Chanel revenched in hiring Jean Helleau , the designer of the first »L' Aimant« bottle, and in copying his design for the flacon of »Chanel Nº 5«.

"Pepper and salt don't taste pleasantly when taken alone, but they enhance the taste of a dish," Beaux said in an 1953 interview with Time. The article continued: "Beaux gives each essence the nose test because some scents will last after a week of exposure, while others, for some unknown reason, will last only a few hours. When he is creating a new perfume he does no sniffing, simply jots down a formula, claims he knows exactly what the final result will smell like. Says Beaux: “It is like writing music. Each component has a definite tonal value ... I can compose a waltz or a funeral march.” At the time of the interview, Beaux was not working on any new perfumes, according to the head of the Chanel fragrance house, Pierre Wertheimer.

Another famous quote from Ernest Beaux highlights the importance of synthetic perfumery raw materials: “The future of perfumery is in the hands of chemists,” he said. "We'll have to rely on the chemists to find new chemicals if we are to make new and original accords.”

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) (marketed from 1927)

»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)

External links

• Ernest Beaux biography