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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German opera – Evelyn Waugh

When in June 1941 famous English writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) returned from Greek battlefield, where he participated in the battle for Crete as a British soldier, he was asked to describe his first war experience.

Everyone expected an extensive report. However, Evelyn Waugh was brief. He wrote only this:

„War is like German opera, too long and too loud“

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Coca-Cola's brief political history

This year marks 125 years since John Pemberton invented carbonated soft drink – Coca-Cola – “cure for nerve trouble, dyspepsia, mental and physical exhaustion, gastric irritability, wasting diseases, constipation, headache, neurasthenia and impotence”. But Coca-Cola was not only a cure, it was also the source of headache and hysteria in the political waters.

The only Coca-Cola that was colorless was created after World War II - for political reasons. It was produced in limited quantities, by special order, for a Russian Marshal Georgi Zhukov, who tried Coca-Cola during his negotiations about dividing Germany with the commander of allied forces in Europe, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower. This Coca-Cola was packed in cylindrical bottles that had a red star as a label instead of Coca-Cola’s recognizable logo.

Zhukov really liked this drink, but since the relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to tighten, it was inconvenient for him to be seen with an American drink in his hands. That is why, on Zhukov’s request, and with the approval of U.S. President Harry Truman, Coca-Cola Company manufactured colorless Coke and packed it so that it looked like vodka. 

Last year, Coca-Cola Company celebrated its 100 birthday, and this year they will celebrate 125 years since John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola. 

In the beginning, Coca-Cola was advertised as “Delicious. Refreshing. Exhilarating. Invigorating” drink and also as a cure for nerve trouble, dyspepsia, mental and physical exhaustion, gastric irritability, wasting diseases, constipation, headache, neurasthenia and impotence. By often following U.S. foreign policy, rarely acting in conflict with American interests, and eventually becoming the symbol of globalization, in the past decades Coca-Cola was also and a source of headaches and hysteria in the (international) political waters.

During World War II, a special group of Coca-Cola employees called “Technical Observers” was among U.S. army soldiers. These Technical Observers supervised the shipment and operation of 64 complete bottling plants that distributed nearly 10 billion bottles of Coca-Cola to servicemen and women.

Military personnel who worked in Coca-Cola military plants became just as important as mechanics who worked on the maintenance of aircraft and tanks. And thanks to its popularity, along with lobbying in the army with the statement that this drink was a key product in the war, in 1942 Coca-Cola Company managed to get an exemption from sugar rationing.

A company that at all times sought to show how much symbolic power its drinks has on U.S. troops, also functioned and on the opposing side, in Germany, where before the war this drink was very popular. One of the Nazi statements was that “America never contributed anything to world civilization but chewing gum and Coca-Cola”.

Some publicists have stated that Coca-Cola Company had controversial relations with Germany, before and during World War II: during the war, Coca-Cola branches didn’t stopped working in Germany, but they weren’t able to import the necessary raw materials in the country. Publicist Mark Pendergrast wrote that several top executives from Coca-Cola branch in Germany were in fact members of the Nazi Party, and there are also records that this company sold millions of bottles to Hitler's Germany.

This obscure and not completely explored part of Coca-Cola history was not an obstacle for this product name to become linked not only to America but to key values of Western countries, such as "every kind of freedom, democracy and free market capitalist”, during the Cold War period. Parallel to that, Coca-Cola was expanding in the world, and the American political influence was strengthening. 

In the early fifties, those who were opposed to American influence marked Coca-Cola as an American cultural weapon.  In relation to this, in France was created a term “coca-colonization” - It was used by leftists who fought against opening of factories for bottling Coca-Cola drink. They even tried to prove that Coca-Cola is poisonous. The former president of the Coca-Cola Company, Robert Woodruff, stated that leftist’s hostility towards Coca-Cola comes from the fact that Coca-Cola is the very “essence of capitalism”.

Despite the logic of capitalism, and in the name of protecting the interests of U.S. foreign policy, until the nineties Coca-Cola was practically not present in the Eastern European market. The first opportunity for Coca Cola to install facilities in Russia, in mid-sixties, was not used because the only possible partner was a communist government (there were no private firms in Russia during that regime). For Coca-Cola, that probably wasn’t a problem, but it was for the U.S. government. In that period, U.S. Army was in war with Vietnam, and if Coca-Cola started working in Russia, they would have financed the communist side, American public enemy number one. 

To this day, connection between Coca-Cola and American values brings damage to the Coca-Cola Company in the Middle East.  There, in mid-sixties, Coca-Cola was accused of anti-Semitism and in the following decades it has become a symbol of "American occupying" and "anti-Muslim” policy. Some internet sites claim that Coca Cola, read from right to left, in Arabic language means "No Muhammad, no Mecca". Boycott of Coca-Cola is also elaborated with claims that by buying a bottle of Coca-Cola tenth of its price goes to the largest Arabian enemy, Israel.

In 1966, Coca Cola was accused of avoiding working in Israel, in order to protect sales of its products in the Arabian world. Things started to get complicated when, because of these accusations, Jewish organizations in America begun to boycott Coca-Cola. The company eventually allowed the construction of a bottling plant in Israel, in 1968, but that again caused boycott similar to that of Arabian League, which ended in the early eighties.

With that, Coca Cola found itself again on the course of U.S. foreign policy.  Respond to this was creation of authentic Arabian Colas such as Mecca Cola. Recently, the Iranian Minister of Industries, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, renewed the idea of boycotting Coca-Cola, because it is a "Zionist product”.

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A heart of stone – Joseph Stalin

During World War II, the Nazis imprisoned many members of the Red Army. On the other side, the Soviets have also captured many German soldiers. 

However, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878-1953), Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party, refused to exchange prisoners with the Germans.

The Germans were surprised with Stalin's decision since, among the captives, was his son Yakov.

Yakov eventually died in a Nazi camp.

Stalin's second son, Vasiliy, died of alcoholism in 1962.

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You Never Know What You'll Need – Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov

During World War II,  the United States, that is, the White House was visited by the former Soviet Foreign Minister (Foreign Commissar) Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (1890-1986).

His visit was a top secret, and only a small number of people at the presidential palace know who is actually hiding behind the name of "Mr. Brown".  

However, the content of Molotov’s suitcase raised suspicion among servants in the White House.

When they were tasked to unpack "Mr. Brown’s” suitcase, the servants were astonished with what an unknown man had brought with him to the White House.

Instead of underwear, shirts and formal suits, Molotov packed a gun, a long sausage and a loaf of brown bread.

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