Perfume that smells like a woman! - Chanel No.5

In 1954, Marilyn Monroe sealed the immortality of the perfume “Chanel No. 5”. When she was asked in an interview what does she wear when she goes to bed, she replied: "Two drops of Chanel No. 5".






In 2011, Chanel No.5 is celebrating 90 years of its existence. In 2008, this perfume was proclaimed as the best perfume of all times. Today, this is the best-selling and most famous perfume ever created. 2011 is also marking 40 years since the death of Chanel No.5’s creator - fashion designer Coco Chanel.

Legend has it that this fragrance got its name when Coco Chanel, after presented with several bottles filled with different fragrances for testing, chose the one with number five written on its label. According to other sources, Coco Chanel chose this name because the fragrance was created on the fifth day of the fifth month, in 1921.

This is not only the first perfume in history that was signed with designer's name, but also the first that didn’t just smelled like flowers - as Coco said, this perfume "smelled like woman".

Woman liberated from fashion and social constraints and “The more feminine a woman, the stronger she is” as Coco Chanel used to say, will become a source of inspiration for her creations, for almost fifty years. Although she didn’t considered herself as fighter for women's rights, her revolutionary ideas (in the first half of the twentieth century) regarding the design of dresses, removal of corsets and other accessories, integration of men's and sports clothes or their elements in women's clothing, and undressing of woman's body, were consistent with ideas on the emancipation of women, and thus with the ideas of the feminist movements. 

There are those who believe that Coco "simply" knew how to follow the spirit of her time. Someone once said that a wheel, the one from a bike, did more for the emancipation of women than all women's rights movements altogether. In Coco’s time, women started riding a bicycle, skiing, and even driving a car. They wouldn’t be able to do all this with corsets on them. Before Coco, women were able to ride a horse, but they were obliged to sit on one side, with gathered legs. Then Coco Chanel came and designed riding pants for women. During World War II, when they were replacing men in factories, women had to go to work in practical clothes and short hair. This new lifestyle demanded from women to dress simply, and Coco Chanel’s clothing responded precisely to this demand. The simplicity of her models is linked with her idea that the elegance is hiding in simplicity, but also with economic depression, which sought efficiency in clothes manufacturing.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that Coco Chanel was the one who liberated the female body, the one who created a new woman look and the one who invented the fashion of the twentieth century. This was enough for TIME magazine to add her on the list of 100 most influential people of the past century.

Although she claimed that she was born on August 19, 1893, in the French town Saumur, her real birth date was ten years earlier. She was born as Gabrielle Chasnel, but, thanks to the mistake of hospital employees when they were filling up the documents, she remained Chanel till the end of her life. She was illegitimate child in a poor family that was made of a market stallholder, a laundrywoman, and five other children. When Gabrielle was 12 years old, her mother died and her father left the family. She spent the next five years in an orphanage, which was very important to her because there she learned dressmaking.

After the orphanage, she went to Paris where she performed in cabarets as a singer and dancer. There she got her artistic name – Coco. Her career as a singer didn’t last for very long and Coco began to design hats, which were an essential fashion accessory in those times. With financial support from her lover Étienne Balsan, in 1909 she opened her first boutique. With this boutique her ambitions started to grow – to expand her business by creating clothes that would be, in the same time, comfortable, casual, simple and modern. The hats that she designed earlier, and thanks to whom she became very popular in the Parisian fashion world, were just like that.  She didn’t use feathers and flowers, which were very popular then, and instead of wide rims which caused headaches and neck spasms, she designed small and simple hats.

Coco started to dismiss canons - dresses that were in fashion then were truly luxurious, but they changed the natural shape of the body and drowned women in lace and corsets. Her ideal and her great discovery was a fashion in which woman's body can move freely.

“Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move, to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape.” – Coco Chanel said.

It is very common today to see a woman wearing jeans and trousers, but not many people know that Coco Chanel was one who initiated this trend. She was often inspired with men’s fashion and in 1920’s she decided to design clothes for women very similar to clothes for men. This is how the almost boyish designed outfits were created. Such clothes implied and pants for women, something that was almost unthinkable in those times.

Perhaps her greatest achievement was the creation of "little black dress" in 1926. Half a century later, this dress was included in the ten unavoidable clothes that every woman must have, even in our modern times. At the time of its creation, this dress was almost scandalous: black clothing was reserved exclusively for a period of mourning and wearing it on other occasions was not only considered as a lack of taste, but as profanity. The first little black dress also disturbed the conservatives and because it significantly revealed a woman’s body: it was sleeveless and her length was just below the knees. The secret of success of "little black dress" lies in its simplicity, elegance and sophistication, as well as in its wide use. It can be worn during the day, but also in the evening. It can be made from expensive, but also and from cheaper materials. Audrey Hepburn made it even more popular by wearing it in the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", in 1961. 

Her ideas were not only limited to the design of clothes. She is also meritorious for the most famous color of lipstick, pinky-red, which she created in 1924. Coco Chanel stylized her creations by creating additional accessories that made her models unique.  An integral part of her Chanel style were flower on lapel, or costume or real jewelry, and also flat shoes which were consistent with her idea of comfort and simple look. Women might still wore purses in hand, if it never occurred to Chanel to attach a chain on them.

Her inventions are even today essential elements of women's wardrobe: skirts and jersey dresses, scarf, woman shirt, skirt with pleats, cotton blouse-sweater, sweater with high collar, blazer, strapless dress, and raincoat. In her opinion, woman should feel in her clothes just as men feel in theirs. She believed than men and women are equal, despite the fact that women, in her time, were not allowed to vote.

Because of love affair with a German officer, during World War II, she didn’t returned to fashion world until 1954. Her return once again brought liberating creations – she designed the Chanel costume, which was casual and loose model in comparison to uptight fashion of that time. This costume is popular even today.

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Fashion revolution – Charles IX of France

During his reign, French king Charles IX (1550-1574) was persuaded by his mother,  Catherine de' Medici, that conspirators are all around him.

Being convinced in his mother’s words, Charles IX started to believe that handbags and wallets, in which men carried money, are the perfect place to hide weapons, especially knives, so he forbade their production.

He never even dreamed that this would lead to some sort of revolution in men's fashion.

Since handbags and wallets were banned, tailors started making suits and trousers with – pockets.

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12 Secrets of Better Orgasm!

If you cannot experience climax in sex, you should know that you are not the only one and that there is help. These are some tips that can help you improve your sex life and increase your sex experience.

If you have problems to reach orgasm, you should know that you are not the only one and that this problem brings misery to many men, and especially women.  Before you start to think you have some health problems, you should first consider several things. The reasons are sometimes cultural or psychological. That is why many people consider sex a taboo subject, while some have problems with orgasm because in the past they had negative sexual experiences or because they are ashamed of their bodies. The first step in solving this problem is to try to better know yourself and discover what excites you. Here are some 12 tips that can help you reach climax during sex.

1. Hit the hot spots. A position that allows friction can help you reach orgasm during sexual intercourse. Try the on top position so that the top of the clitoris is rubbing directly the pubic bone of your partner. Or lie on your back with a pillow under your buttocks. You can also try using a vibrator during intercourse.

2. Discuss about it. Men really want from you to guide them. Let your partner know if he is on the right track, either by telling him or by “showing” him with your moans.

3. Find out what excites you. You cannot guide your partner if you do not know what excites you. To train your body to reach orgasm, you need to masturbate. This is the most common advice of sex coaches.

4. Train your orgasmic muscles. Kegel exercises are classic exercises for women who want to transform weak orgasm into phenomenal. These pelvic muscles you can find yourself. They are the muscles of the pelvic or vaginal part. Tighten and relax them. Do Kegel exercises every day, several times a day.

5. The risk is exciting.  Researches show that common pursuit of excitement, whether is it hiking or watching a horror movie, stimulates dopamine in the brain that triggers sexual arousal.

6. Delay the satisfaction. The longer you are piling up the excitement, the bigger explosion you get. Bring yourself close to orgasm, and then delay it or "simmer". Repeat this several times before you experience climax.

7. Focus on your breathing. Tantric sex may sound like something new, but its basic principle is focusing on your breathing, and that increases the pleasure. You can use your breath to channel sexual energy. Partners who breathe in tandem can delay orgasm, and create greater accumulation, which increases satisfaction.

8. Explore the erotic. Hard-core pornography is not the definition of erotic. Erotic movies and books can be very good for awakening passion, which increases the chances for better orgasm. Some erotic movies are full of erotic charge, and they have a plot. Literature is also recommended, as well as erotic series in which women are main protagonists.

9. Creative foreplay. If you need more time than your partner to warm up, start the foreplay by sending emails or sexy SMS, but without being too graphic, since emails do not ensure privacy.

10. Check your medications. Women are, more likely than men, taking antidepressants, which, as is known, may adversely affect sexual life. If you have problems because of these medications, talk to your doctor so that he changes your therapy.

11. Get help from the expert. If you are not among those who easily reach orgasm, expert’s advice may be useful. Nerve damage or low testosterone levels may create a problem. Your doctor can do a medical examination and determine which factors are causing this. You can also look for help from sex therapist.

12. Relax. In a recent French study, in which 500 women took part, it was discovered that in more than 70 percent of them, stress threatens their sex drive. Low libido obviously decreases the chances of orgasm. Because of this, all that disturbs you leave it in front of your bedroom door.

Female orgasm lasts longer. The average male orgasm lasts about six seconds, while female orgasm lasts about twenty seconds. This difference in duration can be viewed as some kind of compensation because women need much longer foreplay. Of course, length and intensity of orgasm vary from person to person and from day to day.

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Better Side of Nicotine!

Each pack of cigarettes has a warning about the brutal truth of harmful effects of tobacco, but it does not inform that smoking bans around the world are creating a new trend – the number of marriages, friendships and close relationships is increasing between the people that are pounded in the rooms for smokers.

Each pack of cigarettes tells us that smoking causes cancer of all possible internal organs, that it has negative consequences for pregnancy...  But, the pack does not say that smoking, in a way, modeled today’s culture of entire civilization and that in recent decades it shaped the lifestyle of modern men and women.

Anti-smoking mania that is currently affecting the western world came to the extent in which the cigarettes are thrown out of the cultural and social life.

Besides prohibiting the advertisement of cigarettes, their display in films and on television also is avoided, and recently, a great "rewriting of history" is in fashion.

In the United States, they erased a cigarette from the hand of the famous Beatle, Paul McCartney, on the cover of re-released album "Abbey Road", and the French have removed cigarettes from the paintings of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, that adorned their ceremonial post stamps. If smokers, hundreds of years ago, were so "notorious", the question is, how would the present-day popular culture look like, and who would, for example, instead of Humphrey Bogart, stand for a cultural icon of the 20th century. For, although Bogart died back in 1957, every kid now knows that he was a great charmer, who never took a cigar out of his mouth. He based his image on a specific method of smoking, holding a cigar in his mouth between two smokes. Such smoking even entered in the Oxford Dictionary, as a verb “bogarting”.

If the new technologies initiate remastering of the old movies, like the French did with their stamps, it would be likely that "Casablanca", from a cult film, will become a comedy, in which the main actor is doing something strange with his hands. Richard Klein, a professor of French literature and the author of “Cigarettes are Sublime”, a kind of history of smoking, said that “Casablanca" is a type of a film in which cigarettes are providing specific light and character. Klein noted another significant "contribution" of Bogart’s cigarettes; if there was not so much smoking in Casablanca, Franklin Roosevelt would not be so thrilled with the film in 1942, and he would not set up a meeting with Churchill and De Gaulle in Casablanca at the beginning of 1943, where there was made a significant improvement in the U.S. and France relations. America, then, ceased to maintain relations with the Government in Vichy and De Gaulle’s move was acknowledged,  and who knows how the course of World War II would have been if Roosevelt and De Gaulle had not met in Casablanca.  Klein also noted that Hitler was sworn anti-smoker, and that, because of this, smoking at that time was accepted as a kind of patriotic duty.

When it comes to popular culture, one should ask what would happen to the famous scene from the movie "Basic Instinct" in which Sharon Stone crossed legs and, close-up, showed her crotch and became a symbol of sexuality for teenagers. To reiterate, this is performed at a hearing where she was a suspect for murder, during which she lit a cigarette, although they cautioned her that it is prohibited. And, in the fatal moment, she uttered a "cult" line: "What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking?"

Smoking, however, is not only an integral part of the cultural heritage of human civilization. Cigarettes did for a long time kill our internal organs, but with an extremely proactive marketing of tobacco companies, cigarettes became a significant social factor. Hypothetically speaking, if no one smoked, the men around the globe would not have a significant advantage in winning the women. For years the older seducers teach kids that you should always have a lighter with you even if you do not smoke, because you never know when a girl needs a fire. For a long time, the first lit cigarette usually went after the first intercourse, and for boys it was the entrance into the world of men.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, had a significant impact in the "conquest of freedom" of weaker gender in their fight for gender equality, and, eventually, they became a symbol of female emancipation and independence. Puritans in America, in the first period after the Second World War thought that there is a subconscious link between the consumption of cigarettes and sexuality, emphasizing "the rigidity of the situation in which a woman puts something between the lips."

So, during the seventies, picture of a woman with a cigarette represented a symbol of independence and freedom from the conservative morality, and that was embodied in an advertising campaign for cigarettes, "Virginia Slims" with the slogan "You've come a long way, baby." This send a message: a woman that smokes a cigarette is a free woman, she enjoys it independently from the man who wants to approach her with a lighter.

In Europe, tobacco control is gaining momentum in the last decade, while in America this struggle is far more present in people's lives, which is why America has become known as a country where smoking is forbidden even in your own apartments because the neighbors may sue you because you are poisoning them through the ventilation system.

Since 1965, the percentage of smokers in America dropped from 45 to about 20 percent of the total population. Hannah Arendt, German political theorist of Jewish origin, had once written that the smokers in line reminiscent her of an unpleasant scenes from her youth, when Jews were still entering the cattle wagons on their way to the gas chambers. That feeling smokers may experience at any airport in Europe, where visitors are forced to seek special rooms for smoking, and where they are pushed as in a nature reserve.  In these “smoking reserves” , however, it is easy to see that relations among people are somewhat closer, because, as non-smokers mind their own business around the airport, smokers chat in a small space.

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In America there is a phenomenon of "smoker's lobby" in large corporations, where the closest relations are made  in the very smoking rooms. This is, maybe, best shown in the most popular sitcom in the last decade, "Friends", when one of the main characters deliberately starts to smoke because she saw that those colleagues of hers who go on smoke-break are getting along better with the head of the company.

Therefore, among smokers who are becoming a new legal category, a new kind of solidarity and opportunity for bonding is created. It is interesting that Ireland was the first country in Europe to introduce a general smoking ban, and that included smoking in pubs, which was seen as a major blow to their local culture. The first effect was a decline in visits to pubs, but in the long term, sociologists have noted another effect - increase in the number of marriages. This was explained with increased interaction between the smokers who were, after the ban, forced to attend small spaces for smokers. In simple words, the average guy in smoking zone has better chances with a girl.

United Kingdom also adopted a total ban on smoking in 2007, which led to the closure of many pubs, particularly low-profit local "holes" for fun for the people in the neighborhood, who felt that it was not right to drink beer without a cigarette.  The respected British weekly newspaper The Economist noted that in the first two years of ban existence, about 27 pubs per week was closed on the island. Some pubs have managed to adopt by attract wine lovers, and almost all pubs have started to serve food (which until recently was unthinkable).

With a change of pub character, "lifestyle" of an average Briton was also changed.  Until the smoking ban, 75 percent of Britons has visited pubs, of which two thirds were considered as regular guests. This is how the journalist of The Economist described a new situation:  “The tables are sticky with half-dried beer. There is a wide range of beers to choose from, but often it tastes as if the pipes have not been cleaned for weeks. Until smoking was banned from pubs in 2007, the front half of pubs stank of cigarettes while the back half was suffused with a smell from the toilets. Sadly, today, the tables are as sticky as ever and, while the cigarette smoke has gone, that has only allowed the toilets' odour to pervade the entire place.”

The only argument which "fighters for the rights of smokers" can not deny are many medical reports that prove that smoking is not only harming health of those who smoke, but people around them to. This is why these bans are slowly conquering the world. Greece is one of the last European countries that was scheduled to introduce a ban in restaurants from September 1 this year, but that was unrealistic in a country that still has 40 percent of smokers. Association of restaurateurs responded with initiative “ashtrays on the tables again”, and the Greeks continued to smoke like chimneys. Most bizarre ban on smoking in Europe is certainly the one in Amsterdam. In front of a certain coffee shop, housed in the middle of Red Light District, opposite to the local church, stands a large sign: "If you smoke marijuana, which is mixed with tobacco, then smoking is permitted only outside. If you smoke marijuana without tobacco, then smoking is allowed inside."

The first ban

The first known smoking ban was introduced in Mexico, in 1575, and involved the use of tobacco in the churches, in all the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Then the Turkish Sultan Murad fourth banned smoking in the Ottoman Empire, and Pope Urban Seventh threatened to "excommunicate anyone who is caught taking tobacco in the church, whether he is smoking, chewing or inhaling it through the nose."

The first "secular" building where smoking was prohibited is the old government building in Wellington, New Zealand, where smoking was prohibited in 1876. The reasons for this prohibition, however, were not medical but in fear of fire, since this building is still the second largest wooden building in the world.

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