Smelly Facts : A Bit of Old News

Since speculation about which of our favorite, classic perfumes have been reformulated has been a rather hot topic in the last couple of years among perfume lovers, I decided to include an excerpt from a 2006 issue of New Scientist I found this week for today’s Smelly Facts post. We might not yet be 100% sure about most of the fragrances we are suspecting to be reformulated, but slowly, we are weeding them out. There’s yet another suspect we no longer need to deliberate over: Chanel’s iconic No.5...

“Chanel No 5 is considered to be the epitome of a timeless fragrance, but its subtleties may have changed over the years. “Regulations introduced since it was created in 1921 have forced many of the original ingredients out of the perfumer’s palette,” says John Ayres, Chairman of Fragrance Foundation UK, in London. If new European legislation is passed in December, other cosmetics may have to be reformulated or removed from the shelves entirely. Last week, members of the European parliament’s environment committee voted in favor of a draft version of Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. REACH calls for manufacturers importing more than 1 tonne of a chemical substance per year to test it for safety and then register it in a central database. Many chemical manufacturers worry that this will force them to retest chemicals they have been using safely for years. Smaller companies may have to stop producing some cosmetics ingredients completely because they are unable to afford the tests, warns Chris Flowers of the Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association in London. “Inevitably, there will be a range of everyday products that suddenly won’t be available on the shelves because we won’t be able to make them,” he says.”

I apologize for including something that is indeed rather old news, but since I had not -before encountering this article- seen a definitive answer on Chanel No.5’s reformulation, I figured it would be useful to lay the rumors to rest with the truth of the matter.

Excerpt in italics is a direct quote from source: New Scientist [0262-4079] yr:2006 vol:192 iss:2574 pg:14 -14