by Lisa Chaney
One of those Gabrielle had in mind here was Paul Poiret. His hugely simplified designs had signaled a fundamental redirection of women’s clothing, so that now it was cut along straight lines and constructed from rectangles of fabric. Nonetheless, there were significant aspects of Poiret’s work that Gabrielle would resolutely eschew. First, Poiret looked with nostalgia to the past. Second, he was seduced by the romance of the exotic, at that moment involving the fantasy of Russia, central to the vogue for all things oriental. Gabrielle recognized that what both these strands of thought — the exotic and indulgence in the past — were doing was hiding from aspects of the present. While Poiret had embraced his radical times and believed he was intent upon liberating women, in his costume “fantasies,” they still played out a version of the old stereotype: woman subjugated and presented as more ideal than real. His harem pants were a perfect case in point.
In the realm of clothing at least, Gabrielle was no longer interested in fantasy. Embracing what she saw as the reality of her times, she not only gave women practical, stylish clothes but also made them fashionable. And at the end of that hectically busy summer at Deauville, the first of the war, Gabrielle had earned the huge sum of two hundred thousand gold francs. (In today’s currency, this is worth approximately ₤560,000.)
When he could, Arthur rushed back from the front to maintain his business interests and visit Gabrielle and his friends. But life was entirely altered. The majority of his contemporaries were paring down their lives and feeling diminished by the war. To begin with, aside from old men and boys, much of the male population had been packed off to fight. Paris felt unrecognizable:
Rid of its bad ferments, [it] had become popular, fraternal again: we were humble little things at the mercy of events: the stock exchange was closed, theaters were shut, the Parliament was away, luxury cars were in Bordeaux… the streets of Paris have become great village streets again, where one communicates from door to door.10
But Gabrielle’s and Arthur’s entrepreneurial spirit — some would call it opportunism — made what they had to offer very salable, and their response to their times united them still further. While Gabrielle sold her simple, stylish and appropriately sober clothes, Arthur used his fleet of ships to become one of France’s major providers of coal, then one of the most crucial resources in the running of a country and a war.
By the end of November 1914, Arthur was based in Flanders with his fellow officers at the Château de la Motte au Bois. Its châtelaine, the Baroness Clémentine de la Grange, noted how appropriate Arthur’s first billet, with two lady milliners, had been, saying that it was “not for the first time… that millinery has played a part in his life.” As a close friend of the baroness’s nephew, another intelligence officer, Odon de Lubersac, Arthur was invited to stay at the château.
Shortly before Christmas, Arthur’s commander, General Allenby, offered to have her driven to visit her other son at Reims. She later recorded:
I started in Captain Capel’s car, driven by a Parisian ex-jeweller, his chauffeur. Captain Capel and Lieutenant Pinto asked permission to accompany me to Paris. When passing through the village of Croisettes… I stopped a few minutes to see my nephew, Renauld. As I went back to the car I saw a crowd round it. Boy Capel was already seated by the chauffeur, smoking his pipe, with an expression on his face that aroused my suspicions. Lieutenant Pinto and I, before getting into the car, tried to fathom the reason for the villagers’ curiosity. At last we discovered on the back of the car, which was thick with dust, that the wretched Boy had written with his finger, “Honeymoon!” I was the joke of the village!
Capel, though of a most solemn and serious appearance, cannot resist a joke, good or bad. 11
Meanwhile, along with many of the Deauville beau monde, Gabrielle returned to the capital with Antoinette, leaving a saleswoman in charge of the salon. While the war hadn’t reached the rapid conclusion that had been predicted, people realized that, for the moment, Paris wasn’t going to be overrun.
In the meantime, Adrienne had returned to Vichy, apprehensive for the safety of her lover, Maurice de Nexon, now fighting at the front; many had already lost loved ones. Two more deaths, while probably leaving Gabrielle relatively unmoved, nonetheless bore a significant connection to her past. Her grandparents had come to their final rest: Adrienne’s mother, Angélina, had died a year earlier, and now Adrienne had her father, Henri-Adrien, buried beside her at Vichy.
In those months following the initiation of hostilities, with Gabrielle’s greater financial autonomy she took on the responsibility for her little nephew, André Palasse, whose mother, Julia-Berthe, had committed suicide so gruesomely. Gabrielle would always feel a particular tenderness for André, and while spending Christmas with Arthur, she decided to send the boy away to school in England. At Arthur’s suggestion, Gabrielle chose his old prep school, Beaumont, so as to teach André English and to begin equipping him with the manners and the bearing of a gentleman.
Following another six months of war, with vast numbers of casualties, there was still no progress along the western front. It has often been suggested that it was the appalling experience of trench warfare that forced the various armies to move almost overnight into the age of technological warfare. By 1915, planes were flying reconnaissance, and flamethrowers, hand grenades and the terrifying poison gas were regularly being used. What Gabrielle called the “age of iron” had well and truly begun.
Early in the summer of 1915, on a brief respite from the front, Arthur took Gabrielle for a few days to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, just south of Biarritz and close to the Spanish border. Originally a fishing port, Saint-Jean-de-Luz had been transformed into a seaside retreat for the wealthy. For those satiated with the large-scale glamour of the more substantial luxury playground Biarritz, there was the culturally more select Saint-Jean-de-Luz. It received an eclectic mix of artistic, aristocratic and literary visitors. Here, embracing a moment of ordinary tranquility in extraordinary times, Gabrielle and Arthur were to be found one day picnicking on the beach with friends.
Gabrielle wore her hair caught back in a headband and a dark bathing costume. Unrecognizable as a swimsuit today, it looks more than anything like a touchingly modest above-the-knee dress. In 1915, however, there was no question: a young woman wearing one of these outfits was rather risqué. Sea bathing had become an important pastime for the French upper classes in the first decade or so of the century, but it was still only intrepid women who took part in this activity.
There are very few images of Gabrielle and Arthur together, but in a handful of recently discovered photographs from that day on the beach, we catch a glimpse of their convivial picnic on the sand. In one, they are with the heir to a sugar-refining fortune, Constant Say. In another, a young woman, lying with her face upturned to the sun, is Constant Say’s mistress, the rising-star opera singer Marthe Davelli. Davelli’s artistic success, and the depth of her lover’s purse, meant that a holiday villa was being built for her nearby. In 1915, suntanned skin was the lot of the poor, forced to work in the sun, and sunbathing was regarded as outrageous. Although it is often stated that Gabrielle was the first woman to make a suntan fashionable, in these photographs, we see that her friend Marthe Davelli had already taken to it with enthusiasm. Another of the picnickers is the aging novelist and playwright Pierre Decourcelle, whose suggestive novels Gabrielle had been caught reading in her days at the Aubazine convent.
Early the following year, when Arthur was again back in Paris from the front, the society painter Jacques-Emile Blanche recorded meeting Gabrielle and Arthur at a dinner party. The guests composed an exalted cast, and Gabrielle’s presence is revealing of society’s awareness of her increased status in changing times. She wasn’t simply the striking mistress of the dazzling Boy Capel but was also acquiring her own reputation as a trendsetting woman of means.
Among those at the dinner were Philippe Berthelot, the suave director of political affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the pol
itical essayist Henri-Adrien Massis; the smolderingly beautiful comtesse Anna de Noailles, thought by many (first among whom was herself) to be the reigning poet queen of the literary salons; Abbé Mugnier, diarist, indefatigable socializer and profoundly unjudgmental confessor to the haut monde; and the opium-smoking lesbian princess Violette Murat, who loved nothing better than a night out in the downbeat cafés and nightclubs of Montparnasse and Montmartre. Violette Murat was already one of Gabrielle’s clients. While there was to be more than a whiff of snobbery about a dressmaker in society circles for some time to come, Gabrielle emanated character and quietly held her own. Indeed, she would come to count as friends several of those present on that evening.
During the war, the resort of Biarritz remained one of the favored destinations of European royalty. And for all those whom war prevented from reaching the resort, there were just as many who were happy to replace them. They came from across the social spectrum, including black marketeers and those newly rich from speculation, and from countries that were neutral. They were unflagging in their desire to escape from thoughts of war, and Biarritz’s elegant attractions soothed their lurking fears.
11. Master of Her Art
Perhaps it was while Arthur and Gabrielle were nearby at Saint-Jean-de-Luz that they came to the conclusion it was the right moment for Gabrielle to open another salon. This time in Biarritz. Whenever the decision was made, before Arthur returned to the front he had already put up the finances for a venture on a far larger scale than Gabrielle’s salon at Deauville. The site she chose was one of the grander private buildings in Biarritz, the Villa Larralde, on the rue Gardères. A faux castle, its situation was perfect: facing the casino, it was en route to the promenade and the beach. Gabrielle was preparing to launch not only her first maison de couture but also the first couture house in Biarritz.
During that same summer of 1915, one of the earliest mentions of Gabrielle’s dresses appeared in the influential American journal Women’s Wear Daily, and showed how the reputation she was already forging was to act as foundation for her latest venture in Biarritz:
Deauville, July 14
Everything points to a brilliant season here. Already quite a few of the villa colony have opened their homes and the leading hotels… are well filled… An interesting feature of life at Deauville for the fair sex is shopping, and the most fascinating shops to be found anywhere in the world are situated principally on the rue Gontaut-Biron and the rue de Casino. These shops are branches of well-known Paris houses. The Maison Chanel has reopened for the season. This house, by the way, was the first to employ Rodier’s golfine and last season launched here the sport coat made of that material. At once golfine became the craze. One wonders what novelty M. Chanel is holding back to launch this year.
The following day it was reported that
Gabrielle Chanel has… some extremely interesting sweaters which embrace new features. The material… is wool jersey in most attractive coloring as pale blue, pink, brick red and yellow. Striped jersey… in black and white or navy and white, is also employed. These sweaters… slip on the head, opening at the neck for about six inches and are finished with jersey-covered buttons… A great success is predicted for these sweaters.
This would prove to be something of an understatement. Using all her ingenuity, Gabrielle had quickly turned the grim wartime circumstances to her advantage. Both tenacity of purpose and ingenuity were required to overcome the shortages of textiles and accessories needed to maintain any dress shop, let alone the possibility of three exclusive salons. Gabrielle drew in Etienne Balsan’s brothers, Jacques and Robert, who worked for the family textile firm, to help obtain broadcloth and to put her in touch with the silk manufacturers of Lyon. In addition, Arthur sought out for her the best woolen weavers and dyers that Scotland could provide.
However, the fabric whose possibilities Gabrielle was to utilize in entirely new ways, and which was the source of as much attention, indeed amazement, as any of the other unusual things she made in her first years as a designer, was the textile mentioned above: jersey, or djersabure. Clothes made from knitted materials — silk or wool jersey — had become fashionable some years earlier, and heavier hand-knitted jumpers were often worn with linen or flannel for tennis, golf and beachwear. However, undyed jersey had never before been used for women and was seen as one of the most humble of materials.
There are several versions of how Gabrielle came to use it, but the gist of the story is that she had met a textile manufacturer named Jean Rodier, who showed her some material he had made up as an experiment before the war. He had intended his machine-made knit for use as underwear for sportsmen, but they found it too scratchy. A machine knit was just what Gabrielle had been looking for, and to Rodier’s surprise, she bought the lot. It was its very soberness, which had not drawn others to it, that Gabrielle found attractive, and she asked Rodier to make her up another lot as well as the one she was already buying.
He refused, saying he was doubtful she would ever sell it. And with the war making raw materials difficult to obtain, he was unwilling to run the risk of wasting a consignment. Why didn’t she make it up, and if her outfits sold, come back to him for more? Gabrielle’s insistence was useless — Rodier was adamant. His reluctance to weave for this woman, who wanted to make into outerwear for her wealthy customers this humble material that had even failed to sell for use as underwear, was reasonable. Of course, with hindsight, we know that Gabrielle proved Rodier wrong.
At first, she used Rodier’s natural cream and gray jersey; then, when he saw that she really could sell it, they collaborated to create some beautiful new colors, as noted above. They also developed corals, Madonna blue, what was described as “old-blue,” and various greys. By 1916, when Women’s Wear Daily heralded the fact that Gabrielle was “the one to bring jersey into prominence,” Vogue described her salon as “The Jersey House.” (Gabrielle wasn’t the only designer to use the fabric, but she was undoubtedly the most innovative, and the one who transformed it into a high-fashion textile.) War shortages and high prices meant that through Gabrielle’s triumphant lead, jersey would overtake more familiar materials such as twill-woven serge, now in great demand for the armed forces’ uniforms. In the summer of 1916, Vogue revealed Gabrielle’s growing influence when describing the promenade of one of the most distinguished streets in the world:
The Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne presents a rather animated appearance. There is the brilliancy of all the Allied uniforms, starred with decorations of all kinds, and there is the measured clank of swords… There is the sprinkling of the new frocks… against the background of neutral-tinted garments which are affected just now. There is the subdued woolen glow of jersey cloth… the liking for jersey has… developed into a passion — a veritable craze. Everyone goes clad in jersey; in palest gray, in beige, in white, and in all shades of blue. Bordeaux jersey is smart… and for young girls there is a red… the modish jersey frock is exceedingly simple in line… [jersey] is cool looking and indescribably chic.
Although jersey was to be the material Gabrielle used most commonly during the war for day clothes, she would also make inspired use of a small number of other fabrics, such as suede for hats as well as coats and jackets, sometimes embroidered with decorative bands. For afternoon and evening, she created dresses of satin, velvet and tulle. On occasion, these were embroidered with cotton, silks or beads. At their best, her clothes were astonishingly beautiful in their masterly unification of fabric, simplicity of design and decoration. In November 1916, Vogue gave a hint of impatience that Gabrielle’s apparently limitless capacity to design using the previously downmarket jersey was clearly not shared by the readers, when it informed them that “it has been rumored lately that women were growing tired of jersey, but Chanel is master of her art, and her jersey frocks are as complete and as daintily finished as frocks of more thoroughly patrician stuffs.”
In another report, Vogue described Gabrielle’s decoration of her thoroughl
y unpatrician jersey, in a “cloak of this thick warm tissue, in yellow, trimmed with grey rabbit.” Here Gabrielle had once again launched one of her remarkable reversals of tradition. For fashionable women, fur had always been one of the accepted means of demonstrating luxury, and the more rare and expensive, the better. Not only had Gabrielle been promoting a textile that in other hands was regarded as entirely downmarket, she now turned another notion on its head: she attached rabbit, that most plebeian of furs, to many of her outfits. And rich and fashionable women flocked to buy them. Gabrielle had the excuse of the war, but selling these downmarket fabrics at upmarket prices, her motivation was complex. She would say:
I had decided to replace expensive furs with the humblest hides. Chinchilla no longer arrived from South America, or sable from the Russia of the czars. I used rabbit. In this way I made poor people… and small retailers wealthy; the large stores have never forgiven me… Like Lycurgus I disapproved of expensive materials. [This is an exaggeration, but the essence is correct.] A fine fabric is beautiful in itself, but the more lavish a dress is, the poorer it becomes.
And then she made one of those singular Chanel remarks: “People confuse poverty with simplicity.”1 Nowadays we immediately comprehend this notion in dress, but it was Gabrielle above all others who would teach us to understand it.
Bearing this idea in mind, the clothes she made with jersey were perhaps the first Gabrielle created that were truly original. And while, as the century progressed, she was to go on and initiate many of the crucial elements in the modern woman’s wardrobe, her influence was to become more far-reaching than simply being first. By the end of the First World War, it would be Gabrielle more than any other designer who had revolutionized women’s dress. But concentration on a length, a style or a type of material is not always the most significant aspect of her originality. What women wore was only the most visible aspect of more profound changes Gabrielle would help to bring about. Through her own extraordinary and unconventional example, she was to become instrumental in forging the very idea of modern woman.
