Mademoiselle Chanel

by C. W. Gortner

  I promoted Angèle to head seamstress, or première, in charge of hiring arpètes, young girls who apprenticed in the workroom doing chores like passing a magnet over the floor to catch stray needles, or steaming fabric. The most talented of these arpètes could rise to become a petite main or intermediate seamstress, trained in the craft of producing clothes. Though skilled with my needle and scissors, I was by no means a practiced designer. My method of work was to drape fabric directly upon a dummy or preferably a live model—Antoinette, mostly. I sat for hours, a cigarette hanging from my lips as I pinned and stitched my original garment. Then Angèle and her staff transformed my originals into toiles, reproducible patterns sewn in muslin to construct samples for display. We purchased electrical sewing machines but much of the work still required hand sewing, with each article fitted to a client’s measurements. Antoinette and Angèle would oversee these fittings, while I inspected every item before it went on display, and again, after completion, to ensure it met the client specifications.

  Of course, all of this took time: time to import jersey from England; time to decide how to launch my line and decide whether to risk doing it at rue Cambon. The delays gnawed at my patience, for by the end of 1912, Poiret had released simplified apparel that echoed my vision. He couldn’t resist adding dolman sleeves, weighting his day coats with embroidery or sable, marring the streamlined image he sought to achieve, but he, too, had sniffed the hint of change in the air and I fretted he would steal my thunder before I had begun.

  Frustrated, I sought an outlet beyond my atelier. I redecorated Boy’s apartment, repainting the red walls in cream, replacing the Oriental carpets with rugs dyed in earth tones, and the still-life paintings with exquisite Coromandel screens. After this was completed—“It looks like a Bedouin palace,” Boy said—I went in pursuit of somewhere else to vent my energy.

  The American dancer Isadora Duncan was creating a sensation in Paris with her innovative performances; her philosophy of liberation of the senses through the body appealed to me. I was twenty-nine, I wanted to maintain my slim figure; a couturier, I told myself, must look the part. I didn’t care to consider that I was perhaps more motivated by the fact that Boy traveled often and I suspected he might have other lovers. We had never discussed monogamy or marriage; he used costly lambskin prophylactics to avoid my getting pregnant, and as I had never heard so much as a hint of a bastard child in his life, I assumed he did the same with others. But I was too proud to ask. Instead, I teased, “You must meet many pretty women on your trips.”

  Glancing up from his newspaper, he replied, “Not as pretty as you.”

  “Me?” I scoffed. “I’m not pretty.”

  “No,” he said, “but I’ve never met anyone more beautiful.”

  I decided the occasional dalliance when he was away was less worthy of concern than remaining the most beautiful woman he knew, so I enrolled in lessons from the highly regarded instructor, Élyse Toulemont, known as Caryathis. Every evening I climbed the steep hill to her studio in Montmartre to endure the banging of her cane on the plank floor, which reminded me of les Tantes, and her pinch between my shoulders when I failed to retain a proper stance, which reminded me of the nuns of Aubazine. I was determined to excel, even if I was too old to entertain ballerina ideas.

  My fervor for dance amused Boy. In 1913, he bought us tickets to the premiere of the Ballets Russes’ Le Sacre du printemps with music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

  IV

  The newly built Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was crammed to overflowing. The Ballets Russes, overseen by its flamboyant Russian director, Sergei Diaghilev, was already famous, having staged performances such as L’après-midi d’un faune, in which Diaghilev’s lover Nijinsky scandalized the audience with his orgasmic simulations and astonishing pirouettes. Having never seen the company, I was eager to be here. We had loge placement, the best seats in the house, but I grimaced as I beheld the sea of tiaras, aigrettes, and ostrich feathers below me. Every woman present wore the ubiquitous pigeon silhouette in violet tulle, nectarine silk, and every glaring shade in between, bejeweled fowl mincing on baroque heels down the aisles, easing onto their seats as though their undergarments contained thorns.

  “I’d like to dress them in black serge,” I muttered, and Boy gave me a cynical smile. I wore black myself, a velvet sheath I’d designed with a collar of silk camellia petals. Sitting among the explosion of pagoda hips and foaming crinoline, I stood out like a raven on a tombstone—though my attire was to be the last thing people commented upon once Diaghilev’s ballet began.

  A discordant throbbing of bassoon piping initiated the spectacle. The first dancers appeared, writhing in plaited wigs and tunics adorned in Russian peasant motifs, contorting themselves into unfathomable poses as the music twanged. Some of the audience members began to hiss. At my side, Boy leaned forward in excitement, but he was a minority in an auditorium that, with astonishing lack of restraint, descended into catcalls that drowned out the score. By the final act, as Nijinsky appeared in a revealing black-and-white costume to exult in the sacrificial rites of spring, chaos erupted, with the composer himself, a thick-lipped bespectacled man, cowering below us as a society lady harangued him for indecency.

  The stampede to leave the theater tumbled us outside. Boy scowled at a monocle-wearing man who elbowed us out of the way as he stalked to his carriage with his disconsolate wife crying out, “It is an abomination!” I had to curb my tongue when another corseted-to-her-teeth matron wailed, “Never in my life has anyone dared make a fool of me until now!” because if she ever bothered to look in her mirror, she would have seen that her dressmaker had done precisely that.

  “Diaghilev certainly knows how to make an impression,” Boy remarked.

  “Yes, I think I should like to meet him someday,” I said. “It’s been an experience.”

  Boy shot me a quizzical look. “Did you enjoy it?”

  I shrugged. “I did not care for it, personally, but I hardly see the fuss. We should at least appreciate the innovation.”

  He chuckled. “I thought you might say that.”

  I remained thoughtful as we returned to our apartment. To me, the furor the ballet roused was another sign that old orders were crumbling and that one person could make a difference.

  Perhaps the next person to do it would be me.

  I PRESENTED BOY WITH MY IDEA. He went pensive, fingering his mustache. At length, he said, “I suppose you’ll need start-up capital?” It was precisely what I longed to hear. No remonstrations that I had only just brought my rue Cambon shop out of debt, no warnings that I ran ahead of myself. I threw myself into his arms, covering him with kisses as he fended me off with halfhearted attempts before he swept me into the bedroom.

  “You’re like a child,” he said later, as I basked in the ache of his ferocious lovemaking and my own near-unbearable anticipation. “You never think of what might go wrong.”

  I cuddled up beside him. “That’s because nothing can go wrong. Not while I have you.”

  In the summer of 1913, I opened my boutique in Deauville, featuring a collection of summer wear in the very resort where I’d made my first breakthrough. I rented a location on rue Gontaut-Biron in the center of the shopping district—where everyone on vacation strolled and where no one could miss the white awning with my name, GABRIELLE CHANEL, in black letters.

  Hiring five local girls who’d apprenticed at dressmaker shops and were fiends with their needles, I left Antoinette and Angèle behind in Paris to run rue Cambon and wrote to Adrienne in Moulins, telling her to visit me. She arrived with her beloved Nexon; she was as beautiful as ever, but dowdily dressed in her old-fashioned black coat, veiled capote, and fur-trimmed collar, despite the blazing heat. In fact, that summer proved to be one of the hottest on record. Seeing me about town in my white pleated skirt and open-necked blouse, the pockets of my oversize beige knit jacket stuffed with my calling cards, women of leisure flocked to my boutique in search of rel
ief. I had samples made of unconstructed pullovers modeled on those Boy wore for his polo games, as well as belted jackets, ankle-length skirts that did not require a corset or stays, and simple afternoon dresses made in the jersey I so admired.

  I had to field doubtful questions about my fabrics; jersey was almost unknown and knit deemed suitable only for men’s undergarments. I did not relish having to guide dubious customers into the fitting area to help them into the samples, snapping my fingers at my assistants to bring me the straw boaters or soft-brimmed hats that completed my ensembles. But once the client felt the rib-expanding release from her previous garb and beheld in the full-length mirror how different she looked, her expression underwent an equally marked alteration.

  “And are you sure, mademoiselle, it’s not too plain?” Baroness Kitty de Rothschild asked as she surveyed herself in one of my midlength jackets and jersey skirts. She had arrived in the shop unexpectedly, alerted by a friend. Her entrance had set my heart to racing, for she was one of the most influential women in France, married to the wealthy Rothschild financier, with innumerable contacts who could make my reputation. “I do love how cool and comfortable this is, but it seems so . . . understated.”

  I smiled. “Elegance is refusal, madame. We should be the ones who wear our clothes.”

  She tugged at the sample. “It also doesn’t fit.”

  I stepped behind her to pull the jacket waist back an inch, no more. She was tall and graceful, with a long patrician face, but her breasts were small and her hips broad, so the jacket should hang loose, to disguise her flaws. “We will make everything for you, baroness. What you see on display are samples. The actual garment will be constructed to your measurements.”

  “So it won’t be mine alone?” she persisted. It was the most challenging obstacle I faced. Like others of her ilk, Kitty de Rothschild adhered to the prevailing sentiment that their apparel must be one of a kind, made by a couturier she visited at a private atelier, not one who ran a shop on the busiest thoroughfare in Deauville.

  Drawing in a breath, I said, “Each woman is unique by nature. Why must her clothing be, when by the very act of wearing it, she herself makes it so? My clothes are designed so that you, baroness, will be seen first.”

  She went quiet for an interminable moment, while I waited, knowing that if she walked out now, without making a purchase, I would lose the very clientele I desperately sought.

  Then, to my relief, she nodded. “Let’s see how this theory of yours works in practice. I’ll take this ensemble and two of your day dresses in—what do you call that fabric again?”

  “Jersey,” I said, feeling a sudden light-headedness that made me sway.

  “Yes, jersey. Two. I trust you can keep my measurements on file, should I wish to purchase additional items? Fittings can be so tedious.” She sighed. “I detest them.”

  “Of course. Just a moment and I’ll send Adrienne in to measure you.”

  I emerged elated, promising the baroness that her purchases would be ready within the week and then marching into the back room, where my staff labored at long tables equipped with a sewing machine at each end. “Not one extra fitting,” I said, wagging my finger. “We have the baroness’s measurements. In three days, I expect her to walk out in her new clothes. Am I understood?”

  I spent long hours once the shop closed, haranguing my beleaguered seamstresses over a sloppy hem or irregular sleeve, and failed to realize how much of an impact I was making until Adrienne drew me outside to point at passersby.

  “Do you see it? Gabrielle, there is the Baroness de Rothschild in your skirt and day jacket. With her is her friend, the diva Cécile Sorel, who was in the shop last week, remember? She’s wearing your striped blouse with the blue pullover. And there, and there: Gabrielle, all these women are wearing your clothes!”

  I blinked, focusing as if through a haze. Seeing me at the doorway, the women paused, turned to look at me with Adrienne, and then each one inclined her head to me before moving on with perspiring maids in tow, laden with boxes from other stores.

  “They . . . they greeted me,” I said, stunned. No one greeted those who dressed them in public; even the despotic Poiret had failed to befriend his clients. “They acknowledged me.”

  Adrienne squeezed my hand. “Of course they did. Oh, Gabrielle, it’s finally happening. You are a success! They will tell all their friends. They’ll come in droves and before you know it, you will be received in the best of society, for how can you not? You’re not a man dressing women; you’re a woman dressing your own and you’re as fashionable as they are—more so, because you teach them.” She hugged me, right there in the doorway. “I’m so proud of you. I always knew this day would come. And I’m going to help,” she said, drawing back. “Maurice says it’s time we moved to Paris so I can do something other than wait for his family to let us marry. I’ll work for you in your rue Cambon shop, if you still want me.”

  I hated tears. I hated to cry. But I couldn’t resist as I hauled her into the boutique and clung to her. Then, wiping the streaks from my face as she sniffled, I said, “Allez! Enough with this corset. If you want to work for me, you must wear only my style.”

  THE UNEXPECTED WHIRLWIND of that summer in Deauville spilled over into Paris.

  Upon the end of the season, with Adrienne assisting Antoinette at rue Cambon, the same women who promenaded through the resort in my apparel arrived at my shop, disappointed to discover I had no clothes but eager nonetheless for my innovative hats. Within a few months of biting my nails to the quick, I set up displays with my knitwear, seeking advantage in the new vogue for sportsmanship. Ladies now wanted smart jersey skirts and jackets for riding bicycles, pullovers for playing golf or croquet, and flannel coats for excursions in the car. No dresses, I assured the ill-tempered modiste in the building. These were casual separates, nothing she could deem an infringement on her territory, although I had begun to envision gowns that would unbolt the stays suffocating us, enhancing our elegance in our natural forms.

  My bank account burgeoned; I pestered Boy about buying out my lease and taking over additional space in the building. I now had more than a hundred society women on my client list, including women of title, courtesy of Kitty de Rothschild, who recommended me to everyone. While I’d not yet been invited to their galas, I had become recognizable enough to earn a caricature in the newspaper Le Figaro, which depicted Boy as a centaur, his polo mallet topped with a hat, and me clasping him with a box in my hand bearing my name.

  “Look, we are famous,” I told Boy, brandishing the cartoon. “And I’m earning more than enough money. It’s time to expand.”

  He frowned. “You should wait. This could all change sooner than you think.”

  “Change? How? I’ve been right about everything so far.” My tone became adamant. “If you don’t want to help me, then I’ll do it myself.”

  “Coco, do you ever look at anything in the newspapers that isn’t about you? We could be at war before the year is out. My political connections tell me—”

  “Women still need clothes. They can’t send their soldiers off to war in the nude.”

  He rolled his eyes, returning to his papers. “Do what you want. You will anyway.”

  I should have realized he was so worried that he didn’t have the energy to argue. But I was too enthused. Boy was right; I barely read the newspapers. Every moment was dedicated solely to my success. To conquer that ultimate bastion, acceptance in society, seemed to me the zenith of my ambitions. I was resolved to become the first designer to be welcomed into those sequestered circles, where I would dress the lot.

  It was November 1913. By the summer of 1914, Europe went up in flames.

  ACT THREE

  DISCARDING FRILLS

  1914–1919

  “IF YOU WERE BORN WITHOUT WINGS, DO NOTHING TO PREVENT THEM FROM GROWING.”

  I

  I was in Deauville when the telegram arrived—a brief notice from Boy, advising me that he’d been d
rafted. All summer, the news had been ominous, first with the shocking assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo. That was followed by Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia and a shove of Teutonic aggression by Germany, which declared against Russia and demanded neutrality from France and Britain, neither of which was willing to agree.

  I remained in blissful ignorance. The season at Deauville promised to be more lucrative than the previous one, the heat like an anvil. It took every spare hour I had to replenish my shelves with my assistants and Adrienne. Kitty de Rothschild brought her friends—princesses, countesses, and wives of renowned painters, such as Madame Matisse, to ransack my store.

  When I tore open the telegram, I froze. I was expecting Boy to join me; in fact, he was late. I had left Paris early to prepare the boutique while he stayed behind to close up the apartment and attend to his business affairs. Now I stood looking at three terse lines:

  BEEN CALLED TO ACTION. DON’T CLOSE THE STORE. LOVE, BOY.

  Three lines. Ten words. Stop.

  Adrienne leaned over my shoulder. Before she could let out a cry of dismay, I clapped a hand to her wrist and pulled her into the back room.

  She was white, quivering. I hissed, “Not a word. We have customers. It can’t be too serious or Boy wouldn’t have told us to stay open, and everyone here would be talking about it. We must continue attending to business until we know more.”

  “But Maurice . . . he’s in Paris, too. He’ll be called to arms!”

  “Then he’ll let you know in due time, won’t he? Now, let’s get back out there. The Princess de Saint-Sauver needs her hem adjusted. You know how she hates dangling threads.”

  Moving like a sleepwalker, Adrienne returned to work. I shoved the telegram into my sweater pocket and followed, keeping a close eye on her as she replied in a monotone to the princess and other clients darted curious glances in her direction.