On the fifth day of the fifth month of 1921, Coco Chanel changed the scent of the world. She released Chanel No. 5as her final vaudeville act—her only child. The perfume would grow to be “le monstre"of the perfume industry, a $300-per-ounce, elegant mist still anchoring the multibillion-dollar Chanel empire. It succeeded where others had never tried by combining the cheap, musky scent of the courtesan demi-mondaines—the “women of the half-world,” as Coco herself was—with the light, single florals reserved for the upper class of Parisian women. Needing a musky base note, Coco resorted to an old perfumer’s trick: scrapings of sexual pheromones from the perianal gland of the Abyssinian civet cat.
Why is it that the elite French perfumers (known as “noses”) and sommeliers (“upturned noses”) of the world spend so much of their time inhaling cat effluvia from expensive glass bottles? A guess: It may have to do with a mind-control parasite called Toxoplasma gondii.
Read more: The Scent of a Cat Woman: Is the secret to Chanel No. 5’s success a parasite?
