Ernest Beaux - Career

Career

Ernest Beaux was born in Moscow, Russia, the second son of the French perfumer Edouard Beaux, who worked for Alphonse Rallet & Co. of Moscow, at the time the most important Russian perfume house and purveyor of the courts of Imperial Russia. In 1898, A. Rallet and Company was sold with about 1500 employees and 675 products to the French perfume house Chiris of La Bocca, France. That year, Beaux finished his primary education, and from 1898–1900 made an apprenticeship as laboratory technician in the soap works of Rallet. After his obligatory 2 years military service in France, he returned to Moscow in 1902, where he started his perfumery training at Rallet under the guidance of their technical director A. Lemercier. He finished perfumery education in 1907 with his promotion to senior perfumer, and was elected member of the board of directors.

In 1912 Russia celebrated the centennial of the Battle of Borodino, the turning point in Napoleon's Russian ambitions. For this celebration Beaux created the fragrance "Bouquet de Napoleon," a floral Eau de Cologne, for Rallet. It proved to be a major commercial success, his first.

The following year, 1913, marked the tercentenary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty. To follow up on his "Bouquet de Napoleon" success, Beaux created a now lost fragrance, the "Bouquet de Catherine" honoring Catherine the Great. This fragrance is not to be confused with a fragrance from Brocard, Rallet's chief competitor in Russia, called "The Empress's Favorite Bouquet" and which later evolved into the Soviet version, "Red Moscow."

"Bouquet de Catherine" was inspired by Robert Bienaime's 1912 "Quelques Fleurs" for Houbigant. "Quelques Fleurs" made use of a newly synthesized and somewhat unstable aldehyde (C-12 MNA) for its top note and it is considered by some to be one of the first "modern" perfumes. "Bouquet de Catherine" was created out of Beaux's fascination with Bienaime's use of this aldehyde and his own desire to conquer this new and difficult aroma molecule.

"Bouquet de Catherine" was not a marketing success, perhaps due to Catherine the Great's German heritage at a time of rising tensions between Russia and Germany which would lead, in 1914, to World War I. While born and raised in Russia, Beaux's French heritage brought him into the French army and, while it was generally expected that this war would last no more than a few months, Beaux was not released from military service until 1919, having by this time seen service in the infantry fighting against Germany and then as an intelligence officer and interrogator at an Allied prison camp at the Kola Peninsula at the Murmansk Oblast during the Russian Civil War.

While serving in the French military, Beaux's perfumer colleagues at Rallet fled during Russia's october revolution to La Bocca, France, to continue working with Chiris. In 1919 Beaux, released now from the army, settled in Paris but continued to have a relationship with the former Rallet employees at La Boca.

In 1913 Beaux's wife had given birth to their son, Edouard. Beaux had converted to the Orthodox faith in order to marry Iraïde de Schoenaich. During the Russian Civil War, Iraïde, with the couple's infant son, escaped from Russia via Finland and after suffering two months of dangers and hardships arrived by boat in France. During her wartime separation from Beaux, Iraïde had become involved with another man with whom she was now deeply in love. Beaux divorced her taking custody of their son. Iraïde, moving to Nice to work with her lover, remained faithful to him until his death. Beaux later remarried and had a daughter, Madeleine, by his second wife.

During these years of disruption between 1914 and 1919 it is believed that the "Bouquet de Catherine" was reworked into Rallet No. 1 In France now in 1919, Beaux continued working on »Rallet N°1« to adapt the formula to the perfumery raw materials available at Chiris and to reduce the price of the formula. The series from which Coco Chanel later selected her famous "No. 5" was most probably these adaptation trials of »Rallet N°1«.