A letter from an ex-CHANEL employee (decoding the old CHANEL batch codes).

(Well, here it is. One of the most important article Andre tried to write.  Never been able to post it as an article, so we post it as "unfinished". The keypoint is How to date Chanel perfumes produced in the world, with apparently impossible-to-decipher batchcodes. Luckily we found an old -now retired- Chanel employee who explained us how to solve the mistery: Chanel used five different batchcodes in the same time! 

Please pardon us, received first in French, then translated in italian, re-traslated in English. last corrections dated June 2016. A few pictures added later for a better comprehension) 

"Hi Andre! 

I received your request through our mutual friend XXXX (...) You ask me if I can help you in decrypting the Chanel batchcodes that were used during the 70s, 80s and 90s around the world. Actually, many years have passed, I worked in the Chanel factory in New Jersey too, well, many years ago! but I still remember something (...) I read your article on Chanel 4-numbers batchcodes, yes, it's correct, it shifted month-by-month and repeated every 8 years (from 00 to 99, then restarted). Well, in America -and outside Europe- the situation was a bit different, codes were partially based on the French ones or completely different, and now I will try to explain how Chanel batchcodes worked.

Chanel codes are so difficult to understand for a simple reason: we used FIVE DIFFERENT BATCHCODES at the same time. If you don't understand how they work, you are lost. So, the first thing to be aware of is to recognize the different types of code. 

The amazing thing is that you will eventually discover how easy it is to understand and use. At the end you will be able to date every perfume! Let's start!

CINESCENT by Gabriela Guidetti: Chanel Nr.5 VS Moulin Rouge (April 2016)

"Je lance ma collection le 5 mai, cinquième mois de l'année, laissons lui le numéro qu'il porte et ce numéro 5 lui portera chance" (Coco Chanel)

Satine - “Christian, I'm a courtesan. I'm paid to make men believe what they want to believe” (from "Moulin Rouge")

BLEU de Chanel: yesterday and today (2010-2015).

I received an incredible amount of requests, asking to sampling different batches of Bleu de Chanel in order to find differences and "reformulations" in these five years. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Bleu. Let me explain the reason: I'm used to Pour Monsieur, Pour Monsieur Concentrèe, Antaeus, Egoiste...and when I sampled Bleu for the first time I remained a bit concerned: I had the impression to have already smelled a few of similar perfumes with fruity/woody notes. 
Bleu de Chanel is the perfect "clean", "inoffensive", "crowd-pleaser" scent. But it lacks very important factors: personality and originality. 
Antaeus was the Animalic Beast, Egoiste was the Sandalwood King, Pour Monsieur was the Old Gentleman, and Bleu is ...the Harmless One. 

CHANEL batch-codes: solving the major issue.

PROBLEM: as many perfume lovers know, there are apparently TWO different four-digits Chanel batchcodes, in contrast each other. What's the correct one?  
SOLUTION: We should have some fresh-factory perfumes to check.... and luckily we got a few "Bleu de Chanel" for verifying it.

How to recognize CHANEL perfumes.

** UPDATE March 2022 ** 

all Chanel batchcodes decrypted 

(including the "american", and rare letters-and-numbers codes)

READ HERE

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how to decode the main ("French") 

4-number batchcode only.

Chanel is one of the most difficult houses to decypher, when you try to "date a perfume".

This is due to the fact that the batch code is based on 4 numbers which apparently have no reference point.

Actually, Chanel adopts a method that is based on the passing of the months, without any reference to the year.

You start with 00, get to 99, and then start all over again, so in these 99 months, just over 8 years have passed.

Low-cost perfumes, anyone?

So many, many discussions about it, just take a trip on Google to find a lot of infos. We are speaking about the famous-infamous "supermarket perfumes beating designer scents".

In summary, a well-known supermarket brand decided to produce their own scents, with only one rule: producing a perfume with a final price "less than five Euros" (4 UK pounds, or 7 US dollars), all inclusive, and on-par (same quality) with well-known designer scents.

The maximum of the trick was a sort of "blind tests" using original designer scents, asking a group of volunteers "what's the best perfume?". Well, the results was that at least 50 % of people said that best perfumes were the supermarket ones (the designer scents used for blind tests were Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel, and Hugo Boss Bottled , both with a considerably higher price than "supermarket" ones). 

Well, let's make the same thing. 

In this test it was decided to repeat the same experiment: on the first side there are the two supermarket perfumes, namely Suddenly Madame Glamour and X -Bolt (total cost: less than ten Euros), on the other side there are samples of Chanel and Hugo Boss.