Bullshitting the Bullshitter? Chanel Damage Control Over Lidl Fragrance Smell-Alike Sounds Skewed

I'm not a usual reader of the DailyMail.co.uk, but when the title "Yes, a £4 bottle of Lidl perfume CAN smell as good as Chanel: But be warned -it could wear off in half an hour" sneaked into my inbox, I just had to look at said article. And look I did and I have a truckload of rant on the sketchy argumentation trying to manipulate the consumer yet again on the part of the industry. There's a stink raised, so your faithful bloodhound got going.

Just two days ago I too had read the Independent.co.uk article titled "Revealed: Lidl's £4 perfume smells identical to Chanel's £70 scent -but the difference is in the bottle" after all. It  reiterated what money-saving expert Martin Lewis said in an interview with Radio Times (and which I already knew myself from experience), namely that the German supermarket Lidl's own brand fragrance Suddenly Madame Glamour (which costs £4, I kid you not, for 50ml/1.7oz in a pretty decent if plain packaging) smells the same as Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle which retails for £70. 
Yup, 15 times costlier, you read this right.

Vanessa Musson has written a detailed side-by-side review ages ago on just this and myself I had included Madame Glamour in Best Inexpensive Fragrances back in 2011. So the immediate response with caveat emptor about the longevity of Lidl's perfume smells of desperate damage control and at points it sounds like people in the field are embarrassing themselves.

With apparently close to 85% of women admitting they would occasionally buy a supermarket version of a fragrance for themselves -if they really thought it smelt the same- the reason for this isn't very hard to see. In fact according to data within the Daily Mail article, the Perfumer's Guild conducted a blind test in which 90% of women actually preferred the scent of the Lidl perfume over the Chanel!

The question whether luxury items differ from much more economic products in similar vein is the packaging, advertising and marketing costs behind it has been already explained only too well in industry's whistle-blowing worthy books by Chandler Burr, the former New York Times scent critic.
If you have missed the breakdown of a cost of fragrance, I urge you to read this old eye-opening article which explains how 100gr of eau de toilette perfume costs only 1.5 dollars to produce!

The tangent then becomes "will they [cheap perfumes] last as long -or vanish, or go off- after half an hour on your skin?"

So, now, let's dissect the arguments against the Lidl fragrance and for the Chanel and see if they hold any water. I'll be quoting from the article in red and presenting my own argumentation right below it in black.

"The main ingredient of all perfume is alcohol (anything up to 90 per cent), meaning that it is the remaining ingredients, labelled ‘parfum’ on the box, which make all the difference.Traditionally, the more expensive scents are those with the highest concentration of this parfum, meaning that an eau de toilette (4-10 per cent concentration) costs significantly less than eau de parfum (8-15 per cent) or pure parfum (15-25 per cent)." 

Correct and therefore it's only fair we should be comparing two similar concentrations: since Lidl's scent comes in only eau de parfum, since Chanel's comes in all three (eau de toilette, eau de parfum and extrait de parfum), we should focus on comparing Lidl eau de parfum against Chanel eau de parfum.

‘One of the main ingredients used in Chanel perfume is natural rose essence, which is one of the most expensive ingredients in the world. It is like gold,’ says Lawrence Roullier White, who runs an artisan perfumery in London.‘Petals do not give out much oil, so you have to distill tons of petals to get any rose oil, which all adds to the cost.‘One bottle of the Chanel perfume contains 1,000 jasmine flowers.‘These flowers, which are grown especially for the brand in Grasse on the French Riviera, are picked by hand and only at night to capture their full aroma.’The cost involved in producing such luxurious essential oils is huge.For example, to make just half a kilogram (1lb) of jasmine oil, 3.6 million flowers are needed at a cost of almost £3,000. Other ingredients in Coco Mademoiselle (named after Chanel fashion house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel) include iris flowers from Florence, Sicilian oranges, French roses and essence from the rind of the citrus fruit bergamot, grown in the Italian region of Calabria."

False on many levels. First of all, all these precious ingredients do not necessarily enter into the eau de parfum (much less eau de toilette) edition, but only (if at all) in the extrait de parfum which is not the thing you regularly see on the department store counter. Chanel does admit to using the Grasse grown jasmine, rose and tuberose only in the extrait when talking about their iconic No.5. But furthermore the ratio of those is so low, that even the allergens regulations threshold (which had raised a furore back in 2008 as threatening to damage Chanel No.5) isn't met! And we're talking about the 0.7% threshold for Jasmine grandiflorum (that's the Grasse varity) in the finished compound, which is already -as per above- only aproximately 10% of the eau de parfum!!!
Then again Chanel has always relied on expounding their "precious ingredients lore".
Besides the bergamot even in the famed Shalimar by Guerlain (nestling its allure on the bergamot top note) is synthetically produced for many years now.

 Then mr.Laurence Roullier White, who runs an artisan perfume store in London (also distributing Caron, Marc Buxton, Farmacia SS.Annunziata, Parfums d'Orsay, Slumberhouse etc.) goes on record with some rather embarrassing, even butt-clenching if I say so myself, stuff.

‘At the end of the day, you get what you pay for,’ adds Mr Roullier White. ‘You cannot expect a £4 bottle of perfume to be the same as a £70 one. 

We have already proven above that fragrance costs very little to actually produce. Visit the eye-opening link mentioned above.

‘For £4, the essential oils will be completely synthetic. ‘Perfumes which are not made from natural essential oils do not last on the skin. 'Those which are, react to the body’s individual chemistry and can transform over time, becoming more floral or musky for example. For £4, you’d be lucky if it lasts half an hour.’ 

Talk about confused. Essential oil is a very specific term and denotes "nature derived". Therefore cannot be synthetic. Surprised mr.Roullier White works in perfume and conflates the two terms. He clearly means "the aromatic ingredients will be completely synthetic".  But as a niche distributor, surely he knows synthetics are often mentioned in niche fragrances official press (!?)

He furthermore undermines himself since every hardcore perfume lover knows that most all-natural perfumes are exactly criticized for their short-lived duration on the skin, while synthetically man-made essences have giga-lasting-power. This is after all one of the main reasons they're used so much! You can read about Iso-E-Super, Ambrox/Ambroxan and synthetic musks on the respective links and enlighten yourself, if you have missed them, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Besides their longevity, synthetics are wildly used for reasons of stability and unchangeability: they ensure a steady  product that doesn't fluctuate risking to alienate its faithful customer.

For the record, Lidl's Madame Glamour eau de parfum lasts a solid 3 hours on my own skin and several more on clothes.

Mr Rouiller White adds: ‘Some of the £70 you pay for Coco Mademoiselle factors in Chanel’s packaging and marketing, but there is no comparison between natural and manufactured essential oils.’ 

He is apparently continuing with the "manufactured essential oils" [sic] confusion. I do hope it's a misquote. And I suppose it was about time he admitted the pay check paid to Keira Knightly and all the people working with her, as depicted above.

The article then states "At times, the bottle may be even worth more than the scent inside, such as with limited-edition bottles of Clive Christian’s Imperial Majesty, which comes in Baccarat crystal with solid, 18-carat gold and white diamonds and which costs £115,000."

It sorta shoots its argument on the foot. If the juice inside is, as per Chandler Burr's breakdown, less than $1.5 then ANY packaging s automatically worth more than the scent inside, I would presume!

Unsurprisingly, many perfume makers are reluctant to reveal whether their product is made from natural perfume oils or synthetic chemicals imitating the real thing. 

There we go again: Natural is good, man-made is bad. Long-time readers know this is highly more complex than that and that in my view it all depends on the context and aesthetics. What initially made an impression, based on having tested both Madame Glamour and Coco Mademoiselle extensively and relying on my life-long experience and *cough cough* knowledge, gained alarming dimensions upon seeing that Chanel is directly "threatened" by the success of the lowly Lidl chain's perfumes and others (such as M&S Autograph line). 

Obviously not because the regular Chanel client will start buying Lidl fragrances, but because the aspiring Chanel user can do just as well without anybody being the wiser.

But the mere implication that a luxury perfume is better because its ingredients cost more, being of better quality, is skewed. If fragrance is an art form, as many of the advocates of posh perfume claim, then would you criticize a painting's worth on the cost of the paints it uses? Exclude imaginative creativity and visionary ability? To do so would be to automatically reduce it to a craft.  It's demeaning and uninformed.

You needn't feel like a fool buying Chanel fragrance (or any luxury perfume) from now on. As long as your choice is informed and you know what you're paying for, which in many cases is mostly the image you're buying into (and that's an art form too), it's an indulgence you can indulge in and it's YOURS to claim. Everything else is bullshit and should be called out on. 

The thing is, anyone can commission a gas chromatograph test (a test which reveals all the ingredients & their ratio in the composition of any given fragrance) and compare the two fragrances' "blueprint" side by side. It only costs around 100$, so if you're determined, you can do it.

A parting shot: Lidl makes excellent lipsticks in beautiful colors and lovely texture and longevity. They retail at 2 euros (!) locally. They only get imported & distributed once in a blue moon. The average Maybelline or L'Oreal lipstick costs no less than 12 euros locally. I leave you to draw your own conclusions regarding why this erratic distribution pattern...

If after all this my post disappears without my desire or consent (things like that have happened in the blogosphere before) then you know what I said is the absolute truth and someone is scared for their fugitive profit margins. In any case, this is your food for thought, assuming Thanksgiving hasn't totally knocked you out (which is just as good and I hope you had a great time!)

Chanel No.5: Precious Ingredients Lore

At the heart of Chanel No.5 marketing lies the lore of prized perfumery materials. Fragrant jasmine from Grasse, real ambergris as precious as gold, the choisest foundations on which to build a masterpiece... It can be argued that the significance -and indeed definition- of a masterpiece doesn't rely on the materials it is made of necessarily, but on the way it is made and the intellectual/emotional message it conveys. Yet, as with anything, a closer examination of any legend brings on its own interesting revelations.

Let's start with the ambergris part. Let's start with a diversion. Have you ever wondered: Why have top U.S. perfume houses either stopped using ambergris as an ingredient or stopped talking about it?

 “It’s illegal to possess ambergris in any form, for any reason,” says Michael Payne at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a U.S. federal agency in Silver Spring, Md., regarding the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Even picking up a stray lump from the beach is prohibited, according to Payne. However, there isn’t a lot of precedent for prosecution. “I know we’ve issued warning letters,” he says. “It was probably a very long time ago. It hasn’t been since 1990.” European companies don't have such a risk-taking hindrance in the way, so the lore  continues  unfazed.

Tilar Mazzeo, the author of The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume, says that “historically Chanel No. 5 certainly did use ambergris.” The original formula leaked in the 1930s, she says, and “the copies I have seen include ambergris or ambrein—the essential scent element of ambergris—as an ingredient.” Not so, says Philip Kraft, a German chemist who creates scents for Givaudan (GIVN:VX), a Swiss manufacturer of fragrances. “There never was any ambergris in Chanel No. 5,” he says. “Not in the formula from 1921, nor in the one of today.” A representative from Chanel declined to comment. [source]

Ambrein smells like ambergris, true, but actually comes from purified labdanum!

Jasmine is also a semi-accurate affair at best in what concerns the communication of Chanel No.5. You will often hear brandished the term "French jasmine" as a denoting of superior quality. Grasse after all has been made famous thanks to its natural products, jasmine out of which is most notorious. The cultivation of the jasminum grandiflorum variety came from the Arab trade route. The Grasse jasmine is sweeter than most and more refined than the bulk of commercial jasmine essence that comes from Egypt (more than 3/4 of the total production comes from this area), Morocco and India (where jasminum sambac is the traditional product). Due to extreme costs to obtain this precious extract only a few companies have been able to use Grasse jasmine in their perfumes. This traditionally included Chanel (who use Grasse jasmine in their extrait de parfum of No.5 and the rest of their jasmine-listing extrait de parfum fragrances) and who have bought their own fields of jasmine and tuberose in the region of Grasse, France since a long while. French jasmine is at the heart of all marketing stories of Chanel. Yet the perfumery restrictions imposed (and condoned by many major companies, Chanel included, in the RIFM organisation) in 2009 specify such a low ratio of jasmine grandiflorum allowed (0.7% under the 43rd amendment of IFRA) that it must mean we're being had on...