by Lisa Chaney
Before the First World War, Gabrielle had intuited that this would be the dilemma at the heart of her era. And rather than shying away from it via nostalgia, she faced it, “saw” it for what it was, and designed clothes accordingly. On into the period of tumult between the two world wars, her devastatingly simple clothes had sometimes seemed a little too grown up. And though she would never have admitted it, it was very difficult not to be seduced by the powerfully escapist climate of thought in the later thirties and, for a while, she lost her way. Her chief première would later say, “When she re-started, it’s really then that she invented, reinvented her style. From my point of view, in 1935 she didn’t have a precise style. It’s when she came back she invented le petit Chanel.”9
Gabrielle had had fifteen years to think things over. Times had changed, but she affirmed what she called “the integrity” of her clothes. Living most of her life at the heart of the narcissistic world of fashion, her puritanical streak led her to say, “I am against fashion that doesn’t last.” While understanding its ephemeral nature better than almost anyone, she had come to the radical belief that fashion’s real purpose was not to redefine the way we look, but to tell us who we are. This was how she believed that it was a lasting, recognizable style that made women look beautiful and was the bedrock of the best fashion.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle had no intention of being left behind in her elegance, and was fascinated by much of what was new. An underlying shift taking place in her trade was reflected in one of the remarkable new synthetic fabrics, easy-care nylon. Gabrielle had foreseen that the days of haute couture were numbered, that the effects were related to the cost of labor and an age that had little interest in the artisan. An instant effect now mattered more to women than how something was made.
Since the war, every couture house had been preoccupied with how to balance its costs. The collections — meaning the sales of models to a wealthy private clientele of a few thousand women — no longer covered anything like the huge costs of running the couture house. (All labor costs had gone up, in particular the traditionally appalling wages of those at the artisanal level of couture, those who actually made the clothes.) Using the cachet of their labels, selling prêt-à-porter was the only path down which the couturiers believed they could go. Both a dilemma and contradiction for Gabrielle, like the rest, she saw that prêt-à-porter was an inevitable part of the future.
Accordingly, through Marie-Louise Bousquet in Paris and Carmel Snow in the States, she cunningly set up a most innovative deal that would fund her new collection. To coincide with its launch, she negotiated “Coco Chanel” ready-to-wear originals in New York’s fashion district, Seventh Avenue. Gabrielle calculated — correctly — that this would stimulate considerable interest around the world. Not only that, when Pierre Wertheimer got wind of her crafty plan, to his credit, he made an immediate and generous offer. He would like to underwrite half of Gabrielle’s new collection’s expenses. If it went well, they all knew that the sales of Nº 5 could only benefit. At seventy, Gabrielle had lost neither her market trader’s shrewdness nor her feminine touch. Once more, her old adversary and friend Wertheimer had been won over.
This coup was part of Gabrielle’s carefully considered campaign in which she refused all interviews. The resulting sense of anticipation meant that several months before her collection, journalists began dredging up and expounding on old articles and photographs: Gabrielle’s thoughts on fashion, her look, her extraordinary friends and all those famous affairs. The young were amazed by this woman in whom the press was so interested.
With her retrieved ex-premières, to whom she said, “Come quickly, we only have ten green years,” she had set to work. The premières were in only two of the old workrooms high up in 31 rue Cambon, while Gabrielle herself worked from one small room on the third floor, close by her private apartment. With one mannequin alone to work on, and one fitter, an elderly, white-haired woman, this was nothing like the past. But Gabrielle’s scissors were, nonetheless, once again hanging authoritatively from around her neck. The task before her was almost insurmountable, and with all in Paris with the vaguest interest in couture waiting on this collection, Gabrielle permitted herself no indulgence, such as speaking of her fears. Instead, she spelled out her criticism of other — male—“pederast” designers, whom she decried for designing on paper rather than on the model’s own body, as she did:
To one of the few journalists who were lucky enough to talk to her in the winter of 1953, and who asked her what she was planning to present in her collection, Coco, superb as ever, answered, “How can you expect me to know? Until the last day I alter, transform. I create my dresses on the mannequins themselves.” 10
Meanwhile, for December 20, 1953, Jean Cocteau wrote in his diary: “Sunday with Coco Chanel, Marie-Louise [Bousquet] and [Michel] Déon. Chattered from one till ten at night without saying one nasty thing about anyone. Coco amazingly revivified by reopening her house.”11
The invitation everyone in Paris wanted for February 5, 1954 (always 5 to bring luck), was the one to Gabrielle’s show. Select members of Paris society were invited, as well as every journalist, photographer, magazine editor and buyer deemed worthy. The night before, as had been Gabrielle’s custom, she lay flat on the floor in the grand salon as her models walked past; she was checking the length of their hems.
30. I Prefer Disaster to Nothingness
Latecomers were locked out, and that even included the editor of the Parisian fashion bible, L’Officiel de la couture. Every newly painted gilt seat was filled; toward the back, the staff members of French, British and American Vogue stood on their chairs to see. The crush, the suspense were incredible. The first girl appeared carrying her number and walked slowly past the audience. The next girl walked just as sedately. Already, it was abundantly clear that Dior’s triumph of a few years earlier was not about to be repeated. One commentator noted acidly:
A black coat-suit, the skirt of which was neither tight nor loose, with a little white blouse… was followed by other suits in rather dull wools, in a wan black, matched joylessly with melancholy prints. The models had the figure of 1930—no breasts, waists, no hips… offering nothing but a fugitive reminder of a time it was difficult to specify… What everyone had come for was the atmosphere of the old collections that used to set Paris agog. But none of that was left.1
The atmosphere was icy. Glances were exchanged. And when, at last, the show finished, there was a moment’s dreadful silence. A pensive and tentative-looking Gabrielle stood in her old position at the top of those mirrored stairs. Traditionally, she had permitted twenty or so of her most privileged friends and admirers to sit on this, the “spine of her house,” to watch the show unfold. This time, unaware of the old protocol, many who hardly knew Gabrielle had crammed themselves onto those notoriously uncomfortable yet much sought “seats.” Vogue would write:
A spare, taut, compressed figure hung with jewels, Chanel looks as she did before the War, except that her widely spaced, lively eyes… deny the lines around them. That she is a monument to common sense, to logical stubbornness, can be seen in her broad, shrewd face with the wide mouth pulled straight across, the eyebrows determinedly pencilled. Her hands are powerful, broad-knuckled; her sculptor’s strong fingers have unpolished nails.
Then, with the last dress, there was a sudden hubbub and the audience was in a rush to get away. Only a handful of friends remained, including Hervé Mille, Maggie van Zuylen and Gabrielle’s faithful première, Madame Lucie. They strained to congratulate Gabrielle, but she was devastated, silent. While her lawyer would say later, “She accepted defeat with a great deal of dignity, a dignity based on self-confidence,” she also implored Madame Lucie to tell her, had she lost her touch? Unquestionably, memories of Gabrielle’s war record were in the air. Nonetheless, while a good number in the fashion firmament had — to a greater or lesser degree — themselves been collaborators, they would have ingratiated themselves quickly enough if they’
d thought Gabrielle’s new collection passed muster.
Meanwhile, one of those whose judgment may in part have been based on criticism of her war record was Lucien François. François, a journalist from Combat, whose power enabled him to make or break reputations, and who was secretly and passionately loathed, insinuated that Gabrielle had had a facelift, and dismissed her: “With the first dress we realized that the Chanel style belongs to other days. Fashion has evolved in fifteen years… Chanel has become a legend idealized in retrospect.” He ended with the acid comment: “Paris society turned out yesterday to devour the lion tamer… we saw not the future but a disappointing reflection of the past, into which a pretentious little black figure was disappearing with giant steps.”2
While the French press described the beauty of the mannequins, and declared that Gabrielle was still a “personality,” it also weighed in with the opinion that, as a designer, she was finished. The response by the British press was just as negative. The headlines announced: “Chanel Dress Show a Fiasco — Audience Gasped!” One article said, “Once you’re faded it takes more than a name and memories of past triumphs to put you in the spotlight.” In a daze, Gabrielle said quietly, “The French are too intelligent, they will return to me.”3 Afterward, she blamed no one for the show’s failure except the press — particularly the French press. There was, however, to be one major exception: the United States.
The outgoing Parisian editor of American Vogue, Bettina Ballard, was being assisted by Susan Train, a young American who had come from New York three years earlier in a “cold and not that glamorous postwar Paris.” Sitting in the Vogue offices, in the magnificent place du Palais-Bourbon, with the experience of hundreds of collections now behind her, she recalls that day in 1954:
All of Paris knew about it. And American Vogue had decided they were going to do a story on Chanel for the February 15 issue [in those days, Vogue came out bimonthly], and the main collections issue would be in the first week of March… Although they cut it in the end, the article started like this, “Trying to direct the flow of Mademoiselle Chanel’s conversation is like trying to deflect Niagara with a twig,” which is absolutely brilliant, because so true!
With the photographer Henry Clarke, Susan was amazed “to discover the mythical Chanel was still alive,” and remembers that:
People at French Vogue had a totally different take. Naturally, because they’d been here during the war and she was “mal vu,” viewed with disapproval… After all, staying on at the Ritz and having a German lover and so forth, that was not very acceptable. Particularly poor Michel de Brunhoff [editor of French Vogue]… He never got over his son, it broke his heart. What he thought and said about Chanel… he was outraged.4
Susan recalls how “all Paris was in a buzz, and that practically every designer had paid tribute to Gabrielle’s comeback by trying to anticipate what she would do with a little Chanely look somewhere.” But when the day of Gabrielle’s show arrived, “it was a nightmare. It was like going back in a time capsule… Dior had changed everything.” Indeed, quite apart from the collection itself, Dior had transformed the idea of a couture collection from a sedate and rather stately masque, to a fast-moving, stylish and seductive show. In addition, he had decorated his svelte models with a brilliant display of accessories; something that Gabrielle had never done. And now here she was, stubbornly ignoring Dior’s effect on the tenor and tempo of fashion. Susan Train remembers:
At Chanel nothing had changed. The show took forever. There were no accessories… Just dresses, shoes. There were no hats, gloves, no jewelry… and clothes that had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on: “It was famously a disaster”… We came out, we got into the car… there was this deathly silence, and Jessica Daves said, with her Southern drawl, “Well, Bettina, do you really think that the collection we have just seen is worthy of the opening pages of Vogue’s Collection Report?”
Bettina Ballard told her young colleagues that, actually, it was no worse than some of Gabrielle’s collections in the late thirties, and suggested a photo shoot to see what they thought. Accordingly, that evening, Susan went with Bettina Ballard and Henry Clarke to Chanel, where they selected pieces from the collection. Bettina chose three or four of these and sent Susan down to the boutique with instructions to gather up whatever jewelry she could lay her hands on. (There was apparently very little to choose from.) She recalls Bettina Ballard’s familiarity with Gabrielle, saying, “She had an intimate knowledge of how she dressed, and had lent Bettina clothes.” Bettina encouraged her young colleagues with the comment, “There was always something in a Chanel collection that was worth it,” and Susan describes her “picking out that suit. She just knew it was going to start a whole new thing.”5
Susan says that there was an American manufacturer, Davidol, who had continued making Chanel suits throughout the war, and on into the fifties: “how much American women loved them… And the new one was easy, because it was so comfortable and yet elegant.” She continues:
And Bettina Ballard bought that suit herself. She not only bought it but she wore it for the Fashion Group Import Show meeting in New York, where all the retailers were shown the clothes that had been bought and brought over from Paris. Bettina stood up in her Chanel suit and said, “Mark my words; this is the beginning of a new thing.” And of course it was! 6
This was the navy suit Bettina Ballard had Henry Clarke photograph and Marie-Hélène Arnaud wear. It was midcalf (Dior’s highly fashionable couture was only just below the knee), and made of jersey, with an easy skirt with pockets, a semifitted open jacket and a white lawn blouse topped off by a pert straw boater. This was Gabrielle’s version of the Chanel suit she had initiated before the war. In 1954, to those who could see it, the suit gave an overwhelming impression of insouciant, youthful elegance, and Gabrielle was to continue perfecting it for the rest of her life.
The other two costumes Ballard selected for the Vogue photo shoot were worn by Suzy Parker, the magnificent, redheaded American, then perhaps the highest-paid model in the world. One dress was in a draped and clinging rose wool jersey, while the other was a mad, strapless evening dress. Vogue described this as “tiers of the most modern of fabrics, bubbly nylon seersucker in bright navy-blue, with huge full-blown roses attached.” Gabrielle explained to the magazine how she was now looking beyond the couture: “I will dress thousands of women. I will start with a collection… because I must start this way. It won’t be a revolution. It won’t be shocking. Changes must not be brutal, must not be made all of a sudden. The eye must be given time to adapt itself to a new thought.”
Maggie van Zuylen’s daughter, Marie-Hélène, who had married Baron Guy de Rothschild, had helped Gabrielle find her new models. They were, like Marie-Hélène Rothschild, well-bred society girls, who knew how to “carry” clothes. Young women such as the Comtesse Mimi D’Arcangues, Princesse Odile de Croÿ, Jacqueline de Merindol, and Claude de Leusse. They were all subjected both to the hours of “posing” for Gabrielle, and the accompanying advice on life and love: “There is a time for work and a time for love. That leaves no other time” was a much repeated adage. Gabrielle was ambivalent about these girls. While she liked to know about their private lives — who they were seeing, the details of their affairs — she also criticized them for going out with men who weren’t particularly rich. They defended themselves by saying that their boyfriends were handsome and fun. Gabrielle was not convinced.
The girls later described how Gabrielle’s instinct for promotion led her to give them Chanel couture for most of their wardrobe. Their connections meant that they “went everywhere, and she knew it. People called us ‘les blousons Chanel.’”
With Gabrielle’s lacerating tongue, she would say, “Yes, my girls are pretty, and that’s why they do this job. If they had any brains, they’d stop.” She also claimed that rather than needing beauty, her models must possess poise and style in the way they carried themselves: “Only the figure, the carriage, the abili
ty to walk exquisitely.” Several of them happened to be some of the most beautiful girls in Paris. Gabrielle believed her models were mistaken in not using their looks more ambitiously, and in their goals, which were love and happiness. Their lack of ambition irritated her, and she charged them to “take rich lovers.” Her own failure to remain with any man meant that Gabrielle was obliged to believe the independence she had worked so hard for was more important than enslavement to a vain search for happiness.
While Gabrielle would, on occasion, say that she didn’t really like her models, she also became much attached to a handful of them, most famously, Marie-Hélène Arnaud. Indeed, for some time after Gabrielle’s return to couture, this beautiful young woman was, apparently, almost “like her shadow.” Some thought their relationship was too intense. When Marie-Hélène arrived at Chanel, she was seventeen, and according to Lilou Marquand loved Gabrielle
as one loves one’s creator. She was incapable of contradicting her, or even of replying to her. She followed her everywhere as if she were her shadow, and never balked at criticism. Everyone was pushing her to express herself more, but she could barely finish a sentence. What use was it anyway? Mademoiselle loved her as much as she would her own daughter and that was enough for her. She had many suitors but none of them ever managed to take her away from the rue Cambon for more than a weekend.
Gabrielle encouraged Marie-Hélène to have steady relationships — but was also very possessive. Marie-Hélène said to Lilou Marquand, “You understand, I have problems.”7 The young woman was herself quite possessive of Gabrielle and, for a time, almost acted as an intermediary between the little court, soon dancing attendance upon her mistress and the outside world.
