The exchange is printed in Marcel Haedrich’s Coco Chanel secrète (Robert Laffont, 1971), the book he built from Chanel’s own tape-recorded recollections; the familiar English wording is Charles Lam Markmann’s 1972 translation, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, page 165. A shorter version was already in print in The Boston Globe in December 1962, credited to “Mlle. Chanel” while she was alive.
“‘Where should one use perfume?’ a young woman asked. ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed,’ I said.” — Coco Chanel, quoted in Marcel Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 165. Verified at quotle.info
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Evoking the world of Coco Chanel — French couturière & founder of the House of Chanel. Theme: "Where should one use perfume? Wherever one wants to be kissed". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Where should one use perfume? Wherever one wants to be kissed". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets
Publication
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1972 — chapter 14, “The Sixth Victory: The Comeback,” page 165
Translation
Charles Lam Markmann, from Marcel Haedrich, Coco Chanel secrète (Robert Laffont, Paris, 1971), page 201
Earliest printing
The Boston Globe, 27 December 1962, page 19 — a shorter version credited to “Mlle. Chanel”
‘Where should one use perfume?’ a young woman asked. ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed,’ I said.
Chapter 14 · “The Sixth Victory: The Comeback”
In the book the reply is followed by Chanel’s own commentary on it: she says she saw the answer printed everywhere, found it a bore, and reckoned it earned her the friendship of the American reporters because she had told them something that made everyone laugh. In Haedrich’s French the exchange runs “— Où faut-il se parfumer? demanda une jeune femme. — Là où vous voulez vous faire embrasser, répondit Coco.”
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Scanned 1972 English translation (Hale reprint of the Little, Brown edition)
December 1962 — first known printing. Quote Investigator’s earliest evidence is a short columnist’s item in The Boston Globe of 27 December 1962: “A woman should use perfume wherever she wants to be kissed” … Mlle. Chanel. Chanel was alive and back at work in Paris. Quote Investigator ↗
1971 — the French book. Marcel Haedrich, editor in chief of Marie-Claire, encouraged Chanel to record her life story on tape and published Coco Chanel secrète from it. Page 201 carries the exchange in French: “Là où vous voulez vous faire embrasser, répondit Coco.” The book appeared in 1971, the year Chanel died. Verified with scans by QI ↗
1972 — the English wording everyone quotes. Charles Lam Markmann’s translation, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (Little, Brown), renders it on page 165 as ‘Where should one use perfume?’ … ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed.’ The Internet Archive’s catalog record confirms the translator and the 1972 edition. Internet Archive record ↗
The verdict. Quote Investigator concludes that Chanel deserves credit for the remark, naming the 1962 newspaper version and the 1971 French version as the two substantive candidates for the original phrasing — a rare clean result among Chanel attributions, many of which the same site opens with “Apocryphal?” among the candidates and closes without finding support. QI’s Chanel file ↗
The attribution is solid, but the text is not free. The exchange was first published in Marcel Haedrich’s Coco Chanel secrète (Robert Laffont, 1971), and the familiar English sentence is Charles Lam Markmann’s 1972 translation for Little, Brown — both far too recent to be public domain in the United States, where the 1931 cutoff applies. Quote it briefly with attribution; do not reproduce the surrounding passage.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The wording drifts — the attribution holds
This is the rare famous-name quote that survives investigation. What does not survive is the wording: almost every version shared online is a newspaper paraphrase rather than the sentence printed in the book, and the remark has also travelled with no name on it at all.
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Wording“A woman should wear perfume wherever she wants to be kissed” Newspaper paraphrase
The most-shared English form is not the 1972 translation. Quote Investigator records “A woman should use perfume wherever she wants to be kissed” in The Boston Globe of 27 December 1962 and “A woman should wear perfume wherever she wants to be kissed” in The Sun-Herald of Sydney in 1997 — both credited to Chanel, neither matching the book. Quote Investigator ↗
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Wording“…wherever a woman expects to be kissed” Unattributed variant
The “expects” phrasing appears in Quote Investigator’s 1973 Chicago Tribune citation, where it is presented as a general French belief about perfume with no speaker named at all. Quote Investigator ↗
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SpeakerArlene Dahl Considered and set aside
Quote Investigator lists the actress and beauty author among the candidates because a 1975 Associated Press feature carried her line that French women place perfume on the parts of the body where they want to be kissed. She framed it as a French custom, and QI’s conclusion credits Chanel, not Dahl. Quote Investigator ↗
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Sourcing“Is it spurious?” Open question, now closed
A Wikiquote editor filed the line under a “Perfume” heading on the Chanel talk page asking whether it was spurious, and no one answered; Wikiquote’s Chanel page still carries no perfume quote in any section. Wikiquote talk page ↗
✓Quote Investigator’s verdict is that Chanel deserves credit for the remark, with the 1962 newspaper version and the 1971 French book both substantive candidates for the original phrasing — so quote it as hers, but know that the English you are quoting is Charles Lam Markmann’s. See the full chronology ↗
Context
Why the line stuck
Chanel launched Chanel No. 5 in 1921, and from then on every interviewer wanted her on the subject of scent. The perfume quip is her answer to that recurring question — and in Haedrich’s book she is quite unsentimental about it, noting that she watched the reply get reprinted everywhere and that it won her the friendship of American reporters precisely because it made everyone laugh.
The remark sits in the chapter Haedrich calls “The Sixth Victory: The Comeback,” the account of Chanel’s return to couture after her 1954 collection. That placement fits the paper trail: the earliest printing Quote Investigator found is a December 1962 Boston Globe item, during her comeback years and well within her lifetime — she died in Paris on 10 January 1971.
She saw the answer printed everywhere, thought it a bore, and reckoned it bought her the American press.
Why the version you have seen probably isn’t the book’s
The wording that circulates on social media — “A woman should wear perfume wherever she wants to be kissed” — is not the sentence in the 1972 translation. It is the newspaper form: the 1962 Boston Globe ran “A woman should use perfume wherever she wants to be kissed,” and The Sun-Herald of Sydney printed “wear” in 1997. Both are credited to Chanel; neither is the book.
The “expects to be kissed” variant has a separate paper trail. Quote Investigator’s 1973 Chicago Tribune citation presents it with no name attached at all — as a general French belief that perfume “should be applied wherever a woman expects to be kissed.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1883–1971 · French couturière & founder of the House of Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was a French fashion designer and businesswoman who opened a millinery boutique at 21 rue Cambon in 1910 and went on to make sporty, casual chic the feminine standard of style after the First World War. Her fragrance Chanel No. 5, launched in 1921, turned a couture house into a scent empire and made her a permanent fixture of the perfume press. She is the only fashion designer on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Marcel Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 165; originally published as Coco Chanel secrète (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1971), 201. Earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator: The Boston Globe, December 27, 1962, 19.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Where should one use perfume? Wherever one wants to be kissed’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/where-should-one-use-perfume-wherever-one-wants-to-be-kissed/