Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life

by Lisa Chaney

  At Moulins, while the rich young officers had been flattering and fun, the reality of Gabrielle’s life had been servitude as a lowly shop assistant, with lodgings in a poor part of town. At Royallieu, she experienced for the first time the elements of grandeur, and also a certain public notice. While never the mistress of the house, she was to remain there as Etienne’s irrégulière for several years to come. Absorbing the standards and conventions of Royallieu, however, was a considerable struggle, and for some time, Gabrielle felt out of her depth. She later admitted lying to camouflage her inadequacy.

  The contrast between her old life and Royallieu was almost unimaginable. Sloughing off virtually overnight a life ruled by figures she found unsympathetic, it is no wonder that she saw Royallieu’s privilege, its servants and its sophisticated company as a kind of dream. No longer did she need to rise early and cross town to her petit bourgeois employers, bowing and scraping subservience to their condescending clients. Slowly comprehending her new position, Gabrielle learned, for example, to negotiate the thorny problem of the Royallieu domestics, of whom she would say, “I was afraid.” Social hierarchies may have been under attack in 1906, but Etienne’s servants would have disdained to treat their master’s lower-class mistress with much deference. Meanwhile, if she chose, this ex-shopgirl needed do nothing all day except lie in bed, reading her trashy novels.

  At first, Gabrielle worked hard at this leisure, something alien to both her nature and her upbringing. Etienne was too active to cultivate the art of languor, and marveled at her ability to read in bed until noon. But Gabrielle was doing more than simply reading popular fiction, she was learning. Since childhood, this highly intelligent young woman had found no one to guide her. Admitting later that her early reading matter was “rubbish,” she added, “The very worst book has something to say to you, something truthful. The silliest books are masterpieces of experience.”3 Indeed, Gabrielle said that she “learned about life through novels… There you find all the great unwritten laws that govern mankind… From the serial novels to the greatest classics, all novels are reality in the guise of dreams.”4 Permitting herself the time, previously in such short supply, to luxuriate in her dreams, Gabrielle devoured her cheap romances, the only imaginative fodder that had so far come her way. One wonders if this orgy of immersion in fantasy may also have signaled something about the inadequacy of her relationship with Etienne.

  Meanwhile, Gabrielle was that rare thing: a person who changes little over time. One could say that as a child she was an old soul: she was already grown. In this way, her character would not really change much; it was precociously well formed. As a result, growing up for Gabrielle did not come, as it does for most people, through events, which bring personal change. Her particular voyage of self-discovery came through her environment, the situation in which she found herself. And of this, as of people, she was always an unusually good observer.

  What was outside her — the world outside her — that was what Gabrielle had to learn. Her unusual mentality in turn provided her with a ruthless attention to the texture of the present. This would become an invaluable asset in her life’s work, for fashion is, as much as anything, about illuminating and articulating the present moment. In years to come, Gabrielle would articulate this precisely when she said, “Fashion should express the place, the moment… fashion, like opportunity, is something that has to be grabbed by the hair.”5

  Life at Royallieu was to prove an important catalyst for this singular young woman. Immersing herself in her new environment, she began a process of separation from the impoverished world of her origins, projecting herself onto a far more expansive stage. Indeed, without Etienne Balsan and Royallieu, we might never have heard of Gabrielle Chanel. Later, she said of those early days at Royallieu: “I was constantly weeping. I had told him a whole litany of lies about my miserable childhood. I had to disabuse him. I wept for an entire year. The only happy times were those I spent on horseback, in the forest.”6 This is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but clearly what Gabrielle described hinted at some kind of emotional crisis during that first year, and in his own way, Etienne must have been supportive. Certainly, whatever she might say of her friends in the future, Gabrielle would never criticize him.

  And on whatever basis the intimate life of Royallieu was organized, for a brief period, the courtesan Emilienne d’Alençon and Gabrielle amicably shared Etienne and his home.

  Emilienne knew she would eventually be deposed as one of the most fêted grandes courtisanes, but what did she have to fear from this young Gabrielle Chanel? Yes, the girl had sumptuous hair, a long neck and a striking profile, but she was far too thin and flat chested; she just didn’t look the part. Yet while Gabrielle didn’t look or dress like any cocotte Emilienne had ever known, with her wit and talent for mimicry, her intelligence and sheer animal force, she could be a most entertaining and seductive companion. She was also happy to remain silent. This, combined with her mix of defiance and cool reserve, gave Gabrielle an enigmatic quality that Emilienne may well have found attractive.

  Unlike Britain, France didn’t punish homosexuality, which was a major feature of Belle Epoque society. Indeed, by 1900, French tolerance had not only made Paris an international refuge for homosexuals, it was also dubbed ‘Paris-Lesbos’ for its reputation as the lesbian world capital. There were a number of married society women who enjoyed lesbian affairs, leading one society hostess to say, “All the noteworthy women are doing it.”7 While it wasn’t against the law, there were very strict social conventions against the sexual experimentation in which both men and women indulged freely. If upper-class women were protected by their social status and greater freedom, sexual deviance had to be acted out with the utmost discretion away from the public sphere. Financially dependent women were obliged to preserve themselves from public scandal. Above all, they had to give the appearance of normality.

  In his novel Nana, Emile Zola’s description of the widespread Parisian subculture of lesbian courtesans reflected a contemporary fascination with these transgressive relationships. Watching a lesbian couple perform was a popular “turn” at brothels and burlesque shows, and in À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust’s Marcel finds his courtesan mistress, Albertine, more desirable when he discovers that she is bisexual. For many men, lesbianism was “seen as a charming caprice, a sensual vice from which he too may profit.”8 Colette’s notorious experimentation with sexual identities introduced her to that Parisian lesbian subculture that included Emilienne d’Alençon. Indeed, Colette would remember a Mardi Gras ball in Nice in 1906 where Renée Vivien and the courtesans Emilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy and Caroline Otero were with “a crowd of courtesans, actresses, corps de ballet members… down from Paris, most of them part-time members of le Tout Lesbos.”9 No prosecution was brought against Liane de Pougy, for example, when her sensational novel Idylle saphique trumpeted her affair with that suave seducer of women, the beautiful and highly intelligent American heiress Natalie Barney. One of Barney’s many lovers was the same Renée Vivien from that lesbian Mardi Gras ball in Nice, who died at the age of thirty-two from anorexia, drink and drugs. Renée Vivien and Barney were two of Emilienne d’Alençon’s most famous female lovers.

  Though lesbianism wasn’t illegal, the rigid social conventions against its public display included a very intolerant attitude toward cross-dressing — indeed, female transvestism was held in great public contempt. A woman on a Parisian boulevard in trousers ran the risk of immediate arrest. Two of those who notoriously flouted this rule were George Sand and, later, Sarah Bernhardt. (As a writer and an actress, they were considered outsiders and thus managed to avoid public censure.)10

  But in private, women in men’s clothes had for long been a common theme in erotic art and was seen as highly suggestive when practiced by the demimondaine. When playing at being a man, rather than threatening the superiority of her client, she provoked an erotic frisson. When Emilienne d’Alençon took to cross-dressing in the early
years of the century, however, she may well have been trading on a double message. Her regulation ties and stiff collars, set off by pert female hats, were possibly as much a covert sign of sisterhood to fellow lesbians as they were an appeal to voyeuristic male fantasies.

  Etienne Balsan was a man with worldly and sophisticated friends who brought their lovers to have fun at Royallieu. Virtually all the female visitors whom Gabrielle would befriend there were, like her, skirting the edges of society. Society still looked askance at actresses and singers, regarding them as little different from kept women; they often were. The courtesans’ sexual attitudes, in combination with the cheerfully liberated sexual atmosphere at Royallieu, may have a bearing on what we will discover about Gabrielle’s own sexuality. It is quite possible that, at Royallieu, she succumbed to the advances either of Emilienne or another of the bisexual female visitors who found her delicate androgyny seductive. And Gabrielle and Emilienne were to remain friends long after Etienne and Emilienne had separated.

  In comparison with the drama expected of female dress at that time, Gabrielle’s lack of flamboyance was understated to the point of sobriety. This austerity was, in part, a determination to distance herself from the ostentation of the courtesan, or the more subtle flaunting indulged in by a mistress. But it should also be remembered that Gabrielle’s attitude was an identification with certain social movements of the period. There was a small number of other young women reacting against the tendency to overstatement in contemporary dress who were presenting themselves with greater simplicity.

  Living openly as Etienne’s mistress, Gabrielle had signaled that she was unconventional, something accentuated by her unusual style of dress. By contrast, Adrienne, who was also averse to being taken for a cocotte, dressed as she would like to be perceived — as a woman of good taste and breeding. She was not interested in making a new world; what Adrienne wanted was to find a better place for herself in the old one. Thus she looked elegant and uncontroversial, presenting an understated version of the contemporary female drama of lace, draperies, trimmings and triumphal hats. This held no interest for Gabrielle.

  While by living at Royallieu she may have sacrificed any respectability, she had also been given a unique opportunity to leave behind her miserable beginnings. However, it didn’t take Gabrielle long to recognize that country-house life could be an indolent one for the masters. Living as Etienne’s mistress failed to consume enough of her prodigious energy, so she launched herself into an activity that both did this and also contributed toward the refashioning of Gabrielle Chanel. The most successful courtesans were those who mimicked best the attributes of better-off women. Only higher-class women rode, and with Etienne’s tutelage, Gabrielle now set about becoming a horsewoman.

  Etienne taught her about the handling of the horse at all stages of its training. Gabrielle proved a most willing and able pupil, luxuriating in an experience that took her outside her normal self. A personality of extremes, once she had decided to apply herself to something, it was done with a fierce intensity. And in her determination to ride, on the days when she and Etienne weren’t training together, Gabrielle was up at dawn and off with his apprentice jockeys and the trainers. With these men she felt at ease, understanding their working-man’s language. She rapidly became not only a fearless and skillful rider, but also a fine polo player, at that time unusual for a woman.

  Gabrielle would say that her fine horsemanship didn’t spring from an obsession with horses, that she wasn’t like Etienne or those English women who “loved hanging around the stables.” Nonetheless, it was for her horsemanship that she was remembered by Valéry Ollivier, one of Etienne’s friends, himself a distinguished horseman. He and the other visitors to Royallieu hadn’t regarded Etienne’s young mistress as particularly significant: “She was a tiny little thing, with a pretty, very expressive, roguish face and a strong personality. She amazed us because of her nerve on horseback, but aside from that there was nothing remarkable about her.”11

  Valéry Ollivier was correct: Gabrielle did have a strong personality. And as a character of outstanding force and intelligence, she could also have excelled at a number of things. In the future, she would say of her couture business, “I could easily have done something else. It was an accident.”12

  After the mid-nineteenth century, it had become increasingly fashionable for women of means to go horse riding. Both female riders and lesbians were called Amazons (referring to those sexually suspect women in Greek mythology). This was because their riding habits had for many years been quasi-masculine ensembles and were regarded as an especially forward-thinking, modern aspect of female dress.13 The riding habits were made of woolen cloth and dark, sober colors (then uncommon for women of means in their daily attire). The women wore severely tailored jackets and skirts over chamois trousers, attached to a corset, frequently made by men’s tailors. It was accepted that these outfits were intentionally masculine, made even more so with the addition of a man’s bowler or top hat. But while the adoption of semimale attire for riding had remained much the same for years, some of the women who hunted were more radical in their appropriation of men’s clothing. For several years, they had worn shorter skirts or even breeches — and rode astride their horses.

  Not long after Gabrielle began learning to ride with Etienne, she was to make another gesture revealing her capacity for nonconformity: she went to the tailor at La Croix Saint-Ouen, in the forest of Compiègne, whose usual clients were stable boys and huntsmen, and had him make her a riding outfit. She didn’t request a female ensemble of fitted tailored jacket and a long skirt; she wanted a pair of trousers — in other words, jodhpurs. Years later, she remembered the tailor’s confusion at her request.

  A photograph shows her sitting astride her horse in her new riding gear: a short-sleeved, mannish shirt, a knitted tie and those rather shocking men’s jodhpurs. Nudging again at tradition, Gabrielle has also substituted the woman’s riding hat — either a top hat or a bowler — for one both less formal and more feminine-looking, wide brimmed and made of soft felt. With her slight figure and broad young face, in this outfit she could almost have been mistaken for a boy.

  If Gabrielle’s part in the evolution of women’s dress was not always as outrageous as others have suggested, while riding astride her horse was in the vanguard, and most shocking was her wearing men’s riding trousers, and not only when she was hunting. And Gabrielle was famously to take this idea further. Rather than confining her blurring of male-female sartorial boundaries to horse riding, it was to become one of her great trademarks; with a hint of that frisson given by cross-dressing, femininity and seductiveness were heightened by borrowings from a man’s wardrobe.

  Etienne Balsan was neither a man of politics nor a man of letters. He was a most gifted and dedicated sportsman whose favorite reading was the racing and the gossip columns in the daily papers. Most important of all the equine pursuits at Royallieu was the racing timetable. From Royallieu, it was possible to visit a racetrack most days of the week, and Gabrielle did so with Etienne and his friends. Mondays at Saint-Cloud, Tuesdays at Enghien, Wednesdays at Tremblay, on through the end of the week to Sunday at Longchamp, the most elegant of racecourses, in the Parisian park of the Bois de Boulogne.

  Spectating at the races had become an immensely popular pastime across the social spectrum. One writer went so far as to say that in France, sport was the turf. As an activity with great social prestige, racing had quickly become a stage on which to vaunt one’s social position. This, of course, included the competitive spectacle of fashion. Indeed, many of those who regularly attended the races were far more interested in the promenade of fashion and society than the racing itself. A microcosm of Parisian society, racetrack meetings attracted enormous crowds, and by the early 1900s, the Longchamp racecourse was one of the most fashionable public venues in France. A huge draw for other forms of entertainment, race days were rich pickings for prostitutes of all kinds.

  While a respectabl
e woman was obliged to be escorted in public, the demimondaine usually arrived unaccompanied and was consequently forbidden access to the enclosure. Yet as the most seductive celebrities of the day, these women were also major attractions. The Second Empire had flourished, and with it the demimonde had flowered, and the grandest of its denizens met with society women, with whom they now frequently shared the same couturier. “At first glance they were the same women dressed by the same dressmakers, the only distinction being that the demimonde seemed a little more chic.”14

  By contrast with the worldly image of these exotic fin de siècle creatures, Gabrielle always appeared unadorned, modest and neat; without exception, her dress was very simple. At the racecourse, intent on watching one of Etienne’s horses in training, she might wear a loose, mannish coat over a tailored jacket, collar and tie, with an undecorated straw boater. She made a practical, sporty look appear most desirable.

  A good many American women appear to have adopted tailored outfits for practical activities as far back as the 1880s. This fashion was well ahead of France. As late as 1901, the influential French magazine Les Modes was still describing the female suit as “a revolutionary development,” adding the caution that “gentlemen have not fully appreciated the tailored costume. They have found it too closely resembling their own.”15

  Gabrielle would say in the future that she had been unaware of being watched and gossiped about as Etienne Balsan’s mistress at the races. She also said, “I looked like nothing. Nothing was right on me… Dresses didn’t fit me and I didn’t give a damn.”16 Gabrielle didn’t wear the traditionally exaggerated female getups for the races, and instead stuck to her simple tailored outfits. Again, it wasn’t that wearing a tailored outfit was unheard of, but it was seen as unconventional for a woman to wear it to the races.