French Chanel No.5 have Russian roots
US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — In Russia, there are deep traditions in the production of perfumes, and above all, women’s perfumes. They were used in tsarist Russia at the court of Empress Catherine II. And after the revolution, women workers became the property. When, after the annexation of Crimea and sanctions in Russia, the fashion for everything domestic again revived, the spirits of local production are again experiencing a surge in popularity and demand.
In Moscow, there is a tradition-rich perfume factory “New Dawn”. Her popular brand of women’s perfumes, Red Moscow, has been around for over a hundred years. In the former Soviet Union, most Soviet women used them.
“These perfumes have a persistent rich aroma, and they are very well suited as a gift,” said Moscow resident Galina (54), who noted that she loved them back in Soviet times.
If you smell the test paper with the perfume “Red Moscow”, then you will be enveloped in a thick swedish aroma. Saleswomen in perfume stores claim that these perfumes are still in demand.
In 2016, the production of domestic perfumes in Russia doubled compared to the previous year. The reason is that there is an active import substitution campaign in Russia. After the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent American and Western sanctions, the import of perfume from abroad in the past two years has been reduced by three times. The most popular French brands became difficult to access, so the Russians turned to relatively cheap domestic brands. In this regard, you hear more and more often from Russian women: “Actually, I like French scents more …”
But in fact, Russian and French women’s perfumes are inseparable from each other in history. After the Napoleonic Wars of 1812, fashion for everything French, including freedom of thought, penetrated into Russia. And with the abolition of serfdom in 1861, huge masses of labor flocked to Russian cities. At that time, by the way, the French perfume company Brocard, the predecessor of the modern New Dawn, was founded in Russia.
According to Olga Vainshtein, a researcher at Moscow State University for the Humanities, at the request of the imperial court, it was this firm that set about developing the “royal perfume,” which was supposed to symbolize the prosperity of the Romanov dynasty. In 1913, after several years of work on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, the perfume “The Empress’s Favorite Bouquet” appeared.
After the 1917 revolution, the French perfume company Brocard & Co. was nationalized, and the representatives of the working class became consumers of its products instead of the aristocracy. However, the recipe for the Empress’s Favorite Bouquet has been preserved almost completely. Only the name has changed. Spirits began to be called “Red Moscow”. “Red” in the then Russia symbolized the spirit of socialism.
The “New Dawn” was still producing the Triple cologne for men, the fragrance of which, according to contemporaries, was loved by Stalin. Cologne was rather cheap, but it contained 60% alcohol. In the last years of the USSR, when the sale of alcohol was sharply limited, it was sometimes used instead of vodka. Now it’s hard to establish how the “perfumes” of the booze after that.
The famous French fragrance Chanel No . 5 there are Russian roots
But did you know that the most famous in the world of women’s perfumes Chanel No.5 have Russian roots?
They were invented by the famous Russian and French perfumer Ernest Bo (born in 1881 in Moscow), who worked in Russia until 1919 as a senior perfumer of the perfume company Rallet that existed in tsarist times in Moscow. In 1921 he emigrated to France. There he created his perfume masterpiece.
According to the research of Utsunomiya Daigaku University Associate Professor Tokiko Ono, on the basis of which she wrote a book, in pre-revolutionary Russia, Rallet was one of the first in Europe to experiment with synthetic flower odors based on aldehydes.
The company managed to achieve high results in this. At that time, she stood on a par with France in this direction of perfumery art. Recent data indicate that, according to their recipe, Chanel No.5 perfumes are similar to those whose composition was announced by the Russian company Rallet at the last stage of its existence. “Thus, modern spirits still have the scents of imperial Russia in their roots,” Tokiko Ono believes.
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The article is written and prepared by our foreign editors from different countries around the world – material edited and published by Ordo News staff in our US newsroom press.
