Chanel No.5 Smells Success!
June 9, 2009
- Audrey Tautou – Chanel No.5
The most romantic and seductive film of the year is not a blockbuster or a period drama – it’s the new, minute-long advert for the most famous perfume in the world, Chanel No.5.
And it stars the latest face of No.5 – Audrey Tautou, the doe- eyed actress who beguiled audiences when she played the lead role in the award-winning 2001 film Amelie.
Set on an elegant, oldfashioned night train to Istanbul, the film is exquisite, Tautou and her male lead are both gorgeous, and they’re bathed in amber light thanks to the director, JeanPierre Jeunet, who has directed the actress twice before.
It’s every inch a minimasterpiece, and a fitting way to introduce Tautou, 32, as the new muse for Chanel.
Tautou follows a long line of stars who have represented No.5, whether in poster campaigns or in TV and cinema adverts.
But then, it should hardly be surprising that Chanel No.5 has so many big names on its roster, as its history stretches back to 1921, when it was the very first perfume created by Coco Chanel, the most talked-about designer in Paris.
Initially produced just for Coco’s own use and for her to give as a present to her best customers, No.5 was soon in such demand that the company Parfums Chanel had to be set up to produce and sell the perfume.
No.5 was popular from the outset but it received an unexpected publicity boost in 1954 when Marilyn Monroe, who had just hit the big time with the film How To Marry A Millionaire, innocently mentioned that No.5 was her favourite fragrance.
In an interview with a reporter, Monroe was asked: “What do you wear to bed?” Her answer: “Just a few drops of No.5.”
This special endorsement forever linked Marilyn’s sexy image with the sophisticated scent. In an entirely unofficial and unplanned way, she became the first iconic face of the fragrance – so much so, that she popped up in a No.5 advert filmed in theearly Nineties.
No.5 has been officially advertised with a series of very different women. Among them were the sporty-looking young American actress Ali McGraw – the star of the classic weepie Love Story – and original supermodels Suzy Parker, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton and Cheryl Tiegs.
In the Seventies, Chanel began to hire actresses to front ever more impressive ad campaigns.
The cool blonde beauty Catherine Deneuve, one of the biggest names in French cinema, appeared in a series of simple ads in which she spoke straight to the camera, while caressing a super-sized bottle of No.5. “You don’t have to ask for it,” she purredsuggestively in one ad. “He knows what you want: Chanel.”
In another, she said: “Chanel.
It’s one of the pleasures of being a woman.”
Carole Bouquet, the elegant brunette who was best-known internationally as having been a Bond girl in ForYour Eyes Only – and who recently played the ex-wife of Carrie’s Russian boyfriend in the final episodes of Sex and the City – took over as the faceof No.5 in the late Eighties.
Her TV and cinema ads were much more Hollywood.With the catchphrase “Share the fantasy”, the Bouquet ads were all about wealth and tapped into the greed and excesses of the era.
In one particularl ad, an orchestra rises from the sea to play for the No.5-wearing woman and, in another, she strode through the desert wearing her shoulder-padded Chanel tweed suit.
Bouquet’s ads were directed by Ridley Scott, the director of such Hollywood blockbusters as Alien and Blade Runner. Subsequent Chanel No.5 ads have also been directed by leading filmmakers and had more of a cinematic feel.
Twenty-year-old Canadian swimming sensation and model EstellaWarren became the youngest-ever face of No.5 in 1999. Her two ad films were directed by hot French director Luc Besson and were pure fantasy: she plays a Little Red Riding Hood character whoswipes a bottle of No.5 from a vault while being pursued by guard dogs.
When Nicole Kidman became the face of No.5 in 2004, Chanel built anticipation about the advertising campaign to fever pitch since it had hired Kidman’s Moulin Rouge director, Baz Luhrmann, to create the ad film.
The story of a star who runs away from her fame, and falls in love while hiding out, it looked beautiful and had a wonderful soundtrack (arranged by Glasgow’s own Craig Armstrong), but it was let down by Kidman’s irritating personality and a dodgyscript.
Like the KidmanLuhrmann film, the new one is directed by its star’s regular collaborator, JeanPierre Jeunet, who worked with Tautou in both Amelie, the film which made her a star, and the haunting romance AVery Long Engagement.
It’s fitting that Tautou is the new face of No.5 – and especially that it’s happening this year because she will also be seen all over the world playing Coco Chanel herself in the movie Coco Avant Chanel, which comes to Britain at the end of July.
And, really, the truest face of Chanel No.5 was Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel herself – she even appeared in the print ads for the perfume in the late 1930s.
The great lady remained loyal to No.5 for the rest of her life, despite having other fragrances at her disposal. Every morning, when she was leaving the suite at the Ritz Hotel where she lived, her maid would phone over to her headquarters on the nearbyrue Cambon to alert the staff to her imminent arrival.
There, a sales girl would scoosh No.5 around the staircase, so that Chanel would walk into a haze of her signature perfume.
With Tautou as both the face of No. 5 and the star of Coco Avant Chanel, it seems as if the history of the perfume’s ad campaigns has come full circle.
Source: California Chronicles
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