ENGLISH TEXTS
have to take care of them all the time,” she said. Demonstrating her real knowledge of horses, she added:“ I told François Mathet: I only want two horses, but the very best. He suggested we go see them one evening at 6 p. m. That’ s when I knew he really loved horses. A true enthusiast visits a horse in the evening, after it’ s eaten, when it’ s relaxed. Never in the morning.” That encounter brought the young owner all the way to the 1964 Prix de Diane. Ridden by Yves Saint-Martin, Romantica had just won the Prix Rouge Rose and made a strong impression in the prep race Prix Finlande. Alongside the Duchess of Kent, Gabrielle Chanel watched the race, which was won by Belle Sicambre. Chanel’ s brief love affair with horse racing ended there, and Romantica retired as a broodmare at the Haras de Bourgfontaine, the property of her famous trainer. A particularly noteworthy anecdote is the story behind Chanel’ s racing silks.“ I would have liked white, at most, white with a black cap. That was taken. I said red. That was taken too. It annoyed me. I decided: red anyway. We’ ll add a bit of white somewhere.” And against all expectations, she entrusted the creation to Hermès.“ They were surprised I wasn’ t making the silks myself. But I dress women, not horses. Three of them came. I chose the red myself. For the white, I told them to cheat— add it at the elbows. When the jockey bends his arm, it disappears.” This episode resurfaced in 2019, when the one and only example of those red satin silks, marked Mathet and G. Chanel, went up for auction at Drouot. For the record, it sold for ten times its estimated value, € 56,320, to none other than the Maison Chanel, now owned by a different, even more famous set of racing silks: light blue and white, the iconic Wertheimer & Frère stable.
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GUERLAIN AND RACEHORSES: A GREAT PASSION SPANNING SIX GENERATIONS
By Serge Okey
From Gabriel Guerlain to the Forien family, via Jean- Paul Guerlain, horses have always held a special place in this great dynasty of perfumers. And in this field, the Guerlains also have a good nose. Habit Rouge, 1965. This renowned fragrance is considered the masculine counterpart to Shalimar. With its refined, coppery and sensual oriental notes, its roots can be traced back to the forest of Rambouillet. Jean- Paul Guerlain loved walking there, and it was upon encountering a huntsman in a red riding coat that the idea came to him to associate horses, his other great passion, with his legendary scent collection. Within the French dressage team, his great friend and mentor Patrick Le Rolland used to say he was“ the only one doing something other than just riding horses.” The horse was a lifelong companion to this great collector.“ I started riding horses at the age of 3 or 4,” Jean-Paul Guerlain recalls whenever the topic comes up,“ and since I became a perfumer at 16, I always had to organize my days by riding at 7 a. m. and again at 7 p. m.”- Due to vision problems, the famed nose, capable of distinguishing 3,000 olfactory nuances, had to give up show jumping in favor of circus riding before eventually turning to dressage. In this discipline, he stood out many times over eighteen years, leading a true international career, even winning the team Grand Prix at Goodwood in England in 1976. His greatest pride is also his greatest regret: missing the podium at the World Championship in Copenhagen in 1974 by just two points. A“ chocolate medal” that remains both sweet and bitter. As a teenager, Jean-Paul Guerlain would regularly hitch up his uncle’ s horses to deliver Gervais cheeses from his mother’ s side
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