BIOGRAPHY: DEIRDRE McQUILLANreviews Coco Chanel: The Legend and the LifeBy Justine Picardie, Harper Collins, 343pp, £25
SOME YEARS AGO, on holiday in France, I found myself in Saumur, famous for its wine and distinguished French cavalry school, the Cadre Noir, whose handsome cockaded equestrians could occasionally be glimpsed crossing the town's narrow streets. Stopping in an elegant boutique, I asked the vendeusewhere Coco Chanel was born, and if there was a plaque or any information. "Madame," she replied dismissively, "here in Saumur they are more interested in horses than in Chanel."
Nevertheless, curiosity about Chanel, “the exterminating angel of 19th-century style” as Paul Morand so eloquently put it, continues, and horses, she once told him, had influenced the course of her life. With so many biopics, books and even a musical about the famous couturier, here is yet another attempt to throw light on a woman who not only made fashion history but also continuously fabricated myths about her life and origins.
Given Morand's bittersweet portrait in The Allure of Chaneland the acknowledged authority of biographies by Marcel Haedrich and Edmonde Charles-Roux, this was quite a challenge for Justine Picardie, a former features editor of Vogue and not a historian. Picardie had some notable advantages, however. One was official access to the Chanel archives, in Paris, and to surviving relatives and employees, but she also had access to the Grosvenor family records in the UK. These revealed the details of Chanel's celebrated liaison with the duke of Westminster, as well as her friendship with Winston Churchill and other prominent members of the British establishment during the war years.
Picardie also visited the Aubazine orphanage where the young Chanel and her sisters were left by their itinerant father after their mother’s death and uncovered the existence of Gabrielle Chanel, a direct descendant of the designer, now in her 80s and living alone outside Paris.
Chanel’s rise from poverty to become head of a business empire began with a wealthy cavalry officer who was her stepping stone to another world, the first of many men who would play a significant role in her life. Étienne Balsan introduced her to a pleasure-seeking social milieu and the rich English playboy Boy Capel, who became her lover and financial backer. Picardie describes Chanel’s beginnings as a milliner, her ability to express the mood of the time in her clothes (wartime restrictions made her an early recycler), the origin of the little black dress and, later, other iconic Chanel items, like the tweed suits and quilted bags.
But it was Chanel No 5 that brought her huge commercial success and, more importantly, further enriched the powerful, publicity-shy Wertheimher family, who made the fragrance and were, eventually, to buy her out. The account of Chanel’s frustrated attempts to gain a greater percentage of the rewards is one of the most interesting in the book.
Her svelte figure and chic garçonnelook, her way of appropriating elements of male attire in an insouciant way and her extravagant use of costume jewellery made Chanel the best advertisement for her clothes and accessories. Picardie gives a good account of the social circles in which she moved, her literary and artistic friendships with people such as Paul Iribe, Paul Reverdy and Misia Sert, and her political entanglements during the German occupation and subsequent exile in Switzerland.
What’s well documented is the relationship with the immensely wealthy duke of Westminster, known as Bendor, with whom she fished, hunted, sailed, rode and entertained, establishing her status in the British upper classes. The rich are attracted to things that can’t be bought, like wit and creative brilliance, and Chanel was obviously not only a good sport but also a great catch. Churchill wrote to his wife that she “is vy agreeable – really a gt and strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire. Bennie [Bendor] extremely happy to be mated with an equal – her ability balancing his power.” Even today, in Mayfair, old lamp posts embossed with double Cs are a memento of the couple’s long but eventually doomed union.
Chanel's relationship at the age of 58 with a German embassy attache in Paris 13 years her junior was to lead to persistent accusations that she was a Nazi collaborator. Picardie attempts to decipher the murkier details of this period, citing police and intelligence records, but doesn't come to firm conclusions. The controversial decision to shut down her business on the declaration of war, in 1939, and her quick release from questioning after the liberation, avoiding the épuration sauvage, when women who had collaborated with the Germans were savagely treated, has been the subject of speculation. Malcolm Muggeridge, then an MI6 officer, describes how Chanel put an announcement in her window that scent was free for GIs; they queued up to get their bottles of No 5 "and would have been outraged if the French police had touched a hair of her head".
Her subsequent comeback after the war and the devastating reception of her collection by the French press was counteracted by the enthusiasm of the US market. It made her famous again. “The comfortable suits and dresses . . . proved far more popular than anyone had predicted and orders came flooding in from the US. The 2.55 quilted bag made its appearance in 1955 and elements of her style became globally recognised, her fame keeping pace with that of her clients.” The vivid pink Chanel suit that Jackie Kennedy was wearing when her husband was assassinated became a bloodstained emblem of that moment in history.
Some wonderful, hitherto unpublished pictures of Chanel from private albums show her as animated and fun-loving, looking modern and fresh even to 21st-century eyes.
The book is weakest in the overblown descriptions of her private rooms on Rue Cambon, the Ritz and the atmosphere of the Aubazine orphanage. “Scissors” describes her work practices, including her hatred of long hair, her exactitude and rigour in fitting a suit or dress, and her final days, when morphine helped to dull the pain of loneliness and old age. Gabrielle Chanel died on January 9th, 1971, at the age of 87, and was buried in Lausanne.
Deirdre McQuillan is Fashion Editor of The Irish Times
