The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume reframes the story of Coco Chanel through a carefully filtered lens. Tracing the classic perfume to childhood smells and later personal olfactory experiences, Tilar Mazzeo shows that all roads in Coco Chanel’s life led to No. 5. The bottle design itself, even the perfume’s name, have deep connections to the designer’s past. Especially influential were the clean, austere aesthetics of the Aubazine Abbey, where the orphaned Gabrielle (a.k a. Coco) was raised. As a result of this clever spin, the book reads as a sort of symbiotic biography of the person and her perfume. Together they weather the storms of love, war, and business.

Throughout the narrative, Mazzeo weaves smooth transitions to clearly written lessons on the history of perfumery and ingredients, including a final chapter (“The End of Modern Perfumery”), on increased restrictions on materials imposed by the International Fragrance Association (IFRA, the perfume industry’s self-regulatory organization), a real threat to perfume formulation as we know it.

One of the book’s premises is that myths have been perpetuated about the perfume’s provenance and reception; even the quotes that preface the volume serve to set the record straight…

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