[citation needed] At the age of twelve, Chanel was handed over to the care of nuns, and for the next six years spent a stark, disciplined existence in a convent orphanage, Aubazine, founded by 12th-century Cistercians[3]: 4  in what is now the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of central France.

The paths that led Chanel to the cathedral for daily prayers were laid out in circular patterns repeating the number five.

[2]: 8–9 Her affinity for the number five commingled with the abbey gardens, and by extension the lush surrounding hillsides abounding with Cistus (rock roses).

Chanel told her master perfumer, Ernest Beaux, whom she had commissioned to develop a new fragrance, "I present my dress collections on the fifth of May, the fifth month of the year and so we will let this sample number five keep the name it has already, it will bring good luck.

"[2]: 60–61 Chanel envisioned a design that would be an antidote for the over-elaborate, precious fussiness of the crystal fragrance bottles then in fashion popularized by Lalique and Baccarat.

The original container had small, delicate, rounded shoulders and was sold only in Chanel boutiques to select clients.

[2]: 104  In a 1924 marketing brochure, Parfums Chanel described the bottle as, "the perfection of the product forbids dressing it in the customary artifices.

Why rely on the art of the glassmaker...Mademoiselle is proud to present simple bottles adorned only by...precious teardrops of perfume of incomparable quality, unique in composition, revealing the artistic personality of their creator.

[2]: 121 The bottle, over the decades, has itself become an identifiable cultural artifact, so much so that Andy Warhol chose to commemorate its iconic status in the mid-1980s with his pop art, silk-screened, Ads: Chanel.

Bader had been instrumental in brokering the business connection by introducing Chanel to Pierre Wertheimer at the Longchamps races in 1922.

The Wertheimers were Jewish, and Chanel used her position as an "Aryan" to petition German officials to legalize her right to sole ownership.

Her grounds for proprietary ownership were based on the claim that Parfums Chanel "is still the property of Jews" and had been legally "abandoned" by the owners.

I have an indisputable right of priority … the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business … are disproportionate … [and] you can help to repair in part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of these seventeen years.

Chanel planned to destroy customer confidence in the brand and tarnish its image, crippling its marketing and distribution.

Thomas worked to ensure that the supply of key components, the oils of jasmine and tuberose, obtained exclusively from the fields of the valley of Siagne above the French town of Grasse, remained uninterrupted by war.

She invited a group of elite friends to dine with her in an elegant restaurant in Grasse where she surprised and delighted her guests by spraying them with Chanel No. 5.

"[3]: 29 Parfums Chanel was the corporate entity established in 1924 to run the production, marketing, and distribution of the fragrance business.

[2]: 132 In the early 1940s, when other perfume makers were increasing brand exposure, Parfums Chanel took a contrary track and decreased advertising.

[2]: 148–149 At the end of World War II, Coco Chanel's wartime collaboration threatened her with arrest and incarceration.

In an attempt at damage control, she placed a sign in the window of her rue Cambon boutique, announcing that free bottles of Chanel No.

Soldiers waited in long lines to take a bottle of Paris luxe back home, and "would have been outraged if the French police had touched a hair on her head".

[3]: 188 In April 1952, American actress Marilyn Monroe appears for the first time on the cover of Life, and the article mentions her answer to the question, "What do you wear to bed?"

Film director Baz Luhrmann, brought in to conceive and direct a new advertising campaign featuring her, described his concept for what he titled No.

[15] It was directed by Johan Renck and featured Cotillard dancing in the moon with French ballet dancer Jérémie Bélingard while singing a cover of Lorde's "Team".

At this time, Chanel's lover was Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov of Russia, the murderer of Rasputin.

Its success inspired Beaux to create a feminine counterpart, whose starting point was the chemical composition of aldehydic multiflores in Houbigant's immensely popular fragrance, Quelques Fleurs (1912).

Timing and unfavorable associations, combined with Le Bouquet de Catherine's hefty price tag, made it a commercial failure.

[2]: 56  The polar ice, frigid seascape, and whiteness of the snowy terrain sparked his desire to capture the crisp fragrance of this landscape in a new perfume.

He worked from the rose and jasmine base of Rallet N°1, altering it to make it cleaner, more daring, reminiscent of the polar freshness he had experienced during his war years.

A laboratory assistant, mistaking a full strength mixture for a ten percent dilution, had jolted the compound with a quantity of aldehyde never before used.