Skip to main content
The Morning Star Shop
Scent of Empire: Chanel Nº 5 and Red Moscow
Engrossing juxtaposition of perfume and politics in France and Russia

KARL SCHLOGEL’S book is an intriguing history of the development of two perfumes in two different worlds, one of which is globally famous, the other almost unknown outside its homeland.

He begins his account in imperial Russia, where a highly developed perfume industry thrived in Moscow. They were led by two French perfume houses, Brocard & Co and Rallet & Co, with their head perfumers — August Michel at Brocard and Ernest Beaux at Rallet — working on closely related perfumes in honour of the tricentenary of the Romanov dynasty.

The October Revolution brought to an end this world of glittering excess for the few. But scents can survive revolutions and Beaux fled back to France, presenting his formula to Coco Chanel.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
drax
Books / 4 July 2025
4 July 2025

SUE TURNER is appalled by the story of the only original colonising family to still own a plantation in the West Indies

Piles of plastic waste in Thilafushi, Maldives, an artificial island created to manage the country's waste / Pic: Dying Regime/CC
Books / 24 April 2025
24 April 2025

SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management

Morenci Mine in Arizona, United States. Morenci represents o
Books / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
SUE TURNER is fascinated to read of another miners’ strike of the 1980s, told through the voices of women
VISCERAL HATRED: Zionist settlers mock an elderly Palestinia
Book Review / 19 June 2022
19 June 2022
A book whose positive message and clear-eyed sense of purpose make it an inspirational read is recommended by SUE TURNER
Similar stories
Lux Hotel - the unofficial headquarters of the Comintern
Book Review / 4 April 2025
4 April 2025
RON JACOBS recommends a painstaking study of the communists and revolutionaries who congregated in Moscow after 1917
PREMONITION OF DISASTER: Anonymous photographer, Fallen Stat
Book Review / 18 March 2025
18 March 2025
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly
FAIR MINDED PORTRAYAL: Peter Forbes as Joseph Stalin in Chur
Theatre Review / 13 February 2025
13 February 2025
MARY CONWAY is gripped by a hilarious and erudite new play that dramatises the making of the alliance that defeated fascism
BROTHERS IN ARMS: Soviet and Polish resistance Armia Krajowa
Books / 2 August 2024
2 August 2024
WILL PODMORE welcomes, with reservations, a new history of Operation Bagration and the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany