With its rich golden hue, art deco–inspired bottle, and timeless, musky scent, Chanel No. 5 is the world’s bestselling perfume and arguably the most coveted luxury product of the twentieth century. In The Secret of Chanel No. 5, Tilar J. Mazzeo offers a fascinating account of No. 5’s creation, its rise to iconic status, and the legacy of its extraordinary success. Mazzeo delves deeply into the life of Coco Chanel, the brilliant, controversial, and steel-willed businesswoman at the heart of the fragrance. She walks the rose plantations and jasmine fields where the perfume’s life begins, and travels to 31 Rue Cambon, the center of the Chanel empire. A blend of evocative history and thoughtful research, here is a glittering account of where art and sensuality mingle with dazzling entrepreneurship and desire: Chanel No. 5.

Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? In this remarkable book, Karl Schlögel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world’s most celebrated perfumes. In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers – Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel – developed related fragrances honouring Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Beaux fled Russia and took the formula for his perfume with him to France, where he sought to adapt it to his new French circumstances. He presented Coco Chanel with a series of ten fragrance samples in his laboratory and, after smelling each, she chose number five – the scent that would later go by the name Chanel No. 5. Meanwhile, as the perfume industry was being revived in Soviet Russia, Auguste Michel used his original fragrance to create Red Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. Piecing together the intertwined histories of these two famous perfumes, which shared a common origin, Schlögel tells a surprising story of power, intrigue and betrayal that offers an altogether unique perspective on the turbulent events and high politics of the twentieth century. This brilliant account of perfume and politics in twentieth-century Europe will be of interest to a wide general readership.

This explosive narrative reveals for the first time the shocking hidden years of Coco Chanel’s life: her collaboration with the Nazis in Paris, her affair with a master spy, and her work for the German military intelligence service and Himmler’s SS. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was the high priestess of couture who created the look of the modern woman. By the 1920s she had amassed a fortune and went on to create an empire. But her life from 1941 to 1954 has long been shrouded in rumor and mystery, never clarified by Chanel or her many biographers. Hal Vaughan exposes the truth of her wartime collaboration and her long affair with the playboy Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage—who ran a spy ring and reported directly to Goebbels. Vaughan pieces together how Chanel became a Nazi agent, how she escaped arrest after the war and joined her lover in exile in Switzerland, and how—despite suspicions about her past—she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and rebuild the iconic House of Chanel.

Edgar Award-shortlisted author Ashley Weaver returns with the fourth installment in the Amory Ames mystery series. The Essence of Malice is filled with her trademark style, wit and clever plotting, sure to delight and charm traditional mystery fans. "In this highly enjoyable and engrossing mystery, Ashley Weaver—with her sure touch for evoking elegance and glamour—wafts her appealing and determined heroine Amory into the world of perfumers, family secrets and the heady whiff of murder. I loved the evocation of scents, skilful shifts of suspicion and the satisfying conclusion." —Frances Brody “The scent of murder and betrayal fills the Paris air . . . The climactic surprise makes this the best of her mysteries to date.” —Kirkus Reviews “For pity’s sake, darling, let me finish my coffee before you begin concocting schemes.” When Amory Ames’s husband Milo receives a troubling letter from his childhood nanny, Madame Nanette, the couple travel to Paris where they become embroiled in a mystery surrounding the death of a famous parfumier. Helios Belanger died suddenly, shortly before the release of his new, highly anticipated perfume, and Madame Nanette, who works for his family, is convinced that her employer’s death was not due to natural causes. The more Amory and Milo look into the motives of industry rivals and the Belanger heirs who are vying for control of his perfume empire, the more they are convinced that Madame Nanette may be right. When secrets unfold and things take a dangerous turn, Amory and Milo must work quickly to uncover the essence of the matter and catch a killer before the scent goes cold. Also out now in the Amory Ames mysteries: Murder at the Brightwell, Death Wears a Mask and A Most Novel Revenge

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style—the iconic little black dress—and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, is fiction based on facts, some uncovered only within the past few years, and vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII. Coco Chanel could be cheerful, lighthearted, and generous; she also could be ruthless, manipulative, even cruel. Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich’s High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, Chanel wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Distrustful of his intentions to set up production on the outskirts of New York City, Chanel fights to seize ownership. The House of Chanel shall not fall. While Chanel struggles to keep her livelihood intact, Paris sinks under the iron fist of German rule. Chanel—a woman made of sparkling granite—will do anything to survive. She will even agree to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect her darkest secrets. When she is covertly recruited by Germany to spy for the Reich, she becomes Agent F-7124, code name: Westminster. But why? And to what lengths will she go to keep her stormy past from haunting her future?

“An intriguing, well-rounded portrait of a fascinating woman whose many important contributions to art and fashion remain popular today.” —Kirkus Reviews Award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin introduces readers to the most well-known fashion designer in the world, Coco Chanel. Beginning with the difficult years Chanel spent in an orphanage, Goldman Rubin traces Coco’s development as a designer and demonstrates how her determination to be independent helped her gain worldwide recognition. Coco Chanel focuses on the obstacles Chanel faced as a financially independent woman in an era when women were expected to marry; as well as her fierce competition with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli; and some of her most memorable firsts for the fashion industry, including the little black dress, the quilted purse with gold chain, and the perfume Chanel No. 5. The book includes a bibliography, a list of where to see her work, and an index. “Rubin’s biography is clear-sighted about Chanel’s faults while extolling her fashion genius. Her source notes and bibliography are meticulous, as is the book’s design . . . This will attract young fashion mavens eager to learn about design history.” —Booklist “Rubin expertly chronicles Chanel’s life in this biography . . . Rubin captures the authenticity of Chanel alongside her psychological need to portray a luxurious lifestyle.” —VOYA “A well-researched primer packed with details on a significant trailblazer.” —School Library Journal “Well-designed biography of a fascinating woman.” —School Library Connection “A succinct, balanced portrayal of controversial haute couturière Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel.” —Publishers Weekly

An intriguing look at vintage perfume's powerful past, including reviews of more than 300 scents, with stunning period advertisements throughout.

This is the story of a genius and a fraud. For more than half a century, Olivier Creed, heir to a French fashion empire but out to conquer an adjacent field by himself, created the most compelling and costly perfumes in the world - scents so successful - artistically and commercially - that the world's largest asset manager bought his small olfactory enterprise for nearly $1 billion in 2020. One could arguably have called him the world's most capable perfumer. Except Olivier Creed never authored the scents for which he has long received acclaim and lucre. Gabe Oppenheim reveals the heretofore untold story behind this supposed-cologne colossus of a man - and the eponymous company that became a social media sensation: That scents were authored by someone else entirely - a brilliant ghostwriter - a hidden, scholarly figure with a great passion for Proust and an unfortunate tendency to doubt the quality of his own compositions. How these two figures met and the arrangement was struck - how they circled each other warily for the next 40 years - how lies, told often enough, became truths - Gabe Oppenheim examines as he journeys into the heart of an industry mystifying and fanciful, enormous and intimate, sensuous and yet so-damn-insubstantial. It's an expedition that takes him to a Creed shop in Dubai and the castle in Normandy where the Ghost resides, having left behind a Parisian world that, in some sense, never acknowledged him. And yet, he's a legend in a certain section of the scented demimonde for a few achievements so innovative he wouldn't yield them even to a charismatic manipulator. Oppenheim explores issues of attribution and artistry, credit and craftsmanship, ingenuity and disingenuousness. "The Ghost Perfumer" is the story of a genius and a fraud. And perhaps the greatest con in the history of luxury retail.