8 A few years later, the ranks of the super rich had swelled by more than 700 percent: On the rising concentration of wealth in the United States during the 1920s, see, for example, Larry Samuel, Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture (New York: ACOM, 2009).
9 department stores, another phenomenon of this enticing new commercial era: On the history of the department store, see Richard Longstreath, The American Department Store Transformed, 1920–1960 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010); Jan Whitaker, Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class (New York: St. Martin’s, 2006); Jacques du Closal, Les Grands Magasins: Cent Ans Après (Paris: Clotard et Associés, 1989).
10 Babe Ruth led the New York Yankees to three World Series titles: For the cultural history of the 1920s, see Lucy Moore, Anything Goes: A Biography of the 1920s (New York, Overlook Press, 2010); Edmund Wilson, The American Earthquake: A Chronicle of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the Dawn of the New Deal (New York: DaCapo Press, 1996); Malcolm Cowley, Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (New York: Penguin, 1994); Jean-Claude Baker, Josephine Baker: The Hungry Heart (New York: Cooper Square, 2001); and Michael K. Bohn, Heroes and Ballyhoo: How the Golden Age of the 1920s Transformed American Sports (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2009).
11 Chandler Burr reminds us … spoken of in reverent tones simply as le monstre–the monster: Chandler Burr, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 143.
12 “It’s unbelievable! It’s not a fragrance; it’s a goddamn cultural monument, like Coke”: Ibid.
1 at nearly four hundred dollars an ounce: At the time of press, a .25-ounce bottle of Chanel No. 5 retails for $95, www.chanel.com/en_US/fragrance-beauty/Fragrance-N"5-N"5-PARFUM–88173.
2 Gabrielle Chanel’s peasant roots: Several biographies explore the details of Coco Chanel’s early life, and I have drawn on the following source material throughout this book: Pierre Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, trans. Eileen Geist and Jessie Wood (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973); Axel Madsen, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own (New York: Henry Holt, 1990); Frances Kennett, Coco: The Life and Loves of Gabrielle Chanel (London: Victor Gollancz, 1989); Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel, trans. Nancy Amphoux (London: Harvill Press, 1995); Claude Baillén, Chanel Solitaire, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Quadrangle, 1973); Misia Sert, Misia and the Muses: The Memoirs of Misia Sert (New York: John Day Company, 1953); and Isabelle Fiemeyer, Coco Chanel: Un Parfun [sic] de Mystère (Payot: Paris, 1999).
3 saint Étienne d’Obazine: La Vie de Saint Étienne Fondateur et Premier Abbé du Monastère d’Obazine, ed. Monsignor Denéchau (Tulle, France: Jean Mazeyrie, 1881).
4 Coco Chanel once later said that fashion was architecture: Haedrich, Coco Chanel, 252.
5 Charles-Roux always believed that: “Whenever [Coco] began yearning for austerity, for the ultimate in cleanliness”: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 43.
6 Bernard of Clairvaux, who founded the Cistercian movement: See Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, trans. Kilian Walsh (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications / Liturgical Press, 1976).
7 Étienne had made a mission of planting richly scented flowers everywhere in the empty ravines and wastes around his abbeys: See La Vie de Saint Étienne Fondateur et Premier Abbé du Monastère d’Obazine; the life specifies that Etienne planted the hills with “flowers yellow and rose,” 233.
8 stone staircase at Aubazine that led to the children’s bedchambers: Madsen, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, 17.
9 It was a desperately unhappy childhood: Baillén, Chanel Solitaire, 167.
10 it remained a guarded and shameful secret: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 43.
11 the aroma of sheets boiled in copper pots sweetened with dried root of iris: Ibid.
12 Aubazine was also filled with symbols and the mysterious power of numbers: Fiemeyer, Coco Chanel, 74; my thanks to Madame Michèle Millas and to the staff and sisters at the abbey of Aubazine for their hospitality and assistance.
13 Double columns reflected the duality of body and spirit, earth and heaven: Aubazine, local historical information sheet, courtesy Michèle Millas; the information on the symbolic importance of architectural numerology that follows also refers to this source material.
14 these are the churches most closely associated with the occult mysteries of the Knights Templar: See Walid Amine Salhab, The Knights Templar of the Middle East (San Francisco: Red Wheel, 2006).
15 “Cistercian cathedrals, churches, and abbeys … are built on measures … which equal more or less [the] Golden Ratio of Pythagoras”: Salhab, The Knights Templar of the Middle East, 158.
16 “No. 5 was her fetishistic number from childhood”: Fiemeyer, Coco Chanel, 74.
17 “she engraved it in the earth … with a branch she had picked up”: Ibid.
18 name “'Cistercian,’ and that of [its] first monastery, Citeaux, both come from the word cistus, of the Cistaceae rockrose”: Karen Ralls, Knights Templar Encyclopedia: The Essential Guide to the People, Places, Events, and Symbols of the Order of the Temple (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2007), 54.
19 Alexandre Dumas brought them to the popular vaudeville stage a generation later: Alexandre Dumas, La Dame aux Camélias (1847) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Giuseppe Verdi, La Traviata (1853) (New York: G. Schirmer, 1986), libretto; Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1995).
20 “La Dame aux Camélias,” she once said, “was my life, all the trashy novels I’d fed on”: Baillén, Chanel Solitare, 180.
21 It was the shape, she always said, of infinite possibility: Linda Grant, “Coco Chanel, la dame aux camélias,” London Telegraph, July 29, 2007, www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/stellamagazine/3360675/Coco-Chanel-la-dameaux-camelias.html.
1 In just another few months, the painter Henri Matisse and his compatriots: See Pat Shipman, Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008); Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005); Alfred Marquet, From Fauvism to Impressionism (New York: Rizzoli, 2002).
2 dance halls like La Rotonde: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 82.
3 selling lingerie and hosiery at a boutique called À Sainte Marie in Moulins: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 56.
4 Called simply La Jolie Parfumeuse–“the pretty perfumer”: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 53, 78; Hector Jonathan Crémieux and Ernest Blum, La Jolie Parfumeuse, An Opera-Comique in Three Acts (New York: Metropolitan Print, 1875).
5 What had occurred to her was–as she put it herself years later–that she had “a hot little body”: Judith Thurman, “Scenes from a Marriage: The House of Chanel at the Met,” The New Yorker, May 23, 2005, www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/23/050523crat_atlarge1?currentPage=all.
6 the tunes of “Qui qu’a vu Coco” and “Ko Ko Ri Ko”: “Ko Ko Ri Ko” was a song from the popular turn-of-the-century one-act opera Ba-Ta-Clan (1855), by Jacques Offenbach–the man behind La Jolie Parfumeuse–and librettist Ludovic Halévy. Ko Ko Ri Ko (baritone) is a French colonialist plotting a coup d'état against the Chinese emperor; the plot involves humorous political machinations, rousing songs, and jokes about Frenchmen meeting abroad. The character may have later been an inspiration for Ko Ko in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado (1885). Mary E. Davis notes that it was made famous as a piece of boulevard music in 1897 by the stage star Émilie Marie Bouchaud, better known as Polaire; see Mary E. Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 154.
The other song that gave Coco her nickname was also a popular stage number. Davis writes that “Qui qu’a vu Coco dans le Trocadero” was a “ ‘canine complaint’ recounting the adventures of a lost dog, which was composed by Elise Faure in 1889,” 154. The lyrics translate to “Who has seen Coco on the Trocadero, / Haven’t you seen Coco? / Coco on the Trocadero, / Co on the Tro, / Co
on the Tro, / Coco on the Trocadero, / Who, oh, who has seen Coco? / Eh! Coco! / Eh! Coco! / Who, oh, who has seen Coco? / Eh! Coco!”
7 “For a large section of society, the similarities between the actress’s life and the prostitute’s or demi-mondaine’s were unforgettable and overruled all other evidence of respectability”: Tracy C. Davis, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 69.
8 She had consented to “be ‘hired’ for amusement”: Davis, Actresses as Working Women, 69.
9 what her biographers believe was a botched abortion: Madsen, Chanel, 27.
10 “I’ve already had one protector named Étienne, and he performed miracles too”: Charles-Roux, Chanel, 73.
11 She had been mistress to the king of Belgium: See Claude Dufresne, Trois Grâces de la Belle Époque (Paris: Bartillat, 2003); Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962); Florence Tamagne, A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919–1939 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2006); and Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Gallimard, 2002).
12 there was a notable difference between the scent of a courtesan and the scent of a nice girl: Richard Stamelman, Perfume: Joy, Obsession, Scandal, Sin (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 29, 93; see also Edwin Morris, Fragrance: The Story of Perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1984).
13 the world’s oldest perfume was made on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus: John Roach, “Oldest Perfumes in History Found on Aphrodite’s Island,” National Geographic News, March 29, 2007.
14 the ancient world’s most famous cults dedicated to sacred prostitution: Stephanie Budin, The Myth of Sacred Prostitution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 50.
15 a plant resin from the Cistercians’ cistus or rockrose, known as labdanum–is inherently sexy: See, for example, Manfred Milinski and Claus Wedekind, “Evidence for MHC-Correlated Perfume Preferences in Humans,” Behavioral Ecology 12, no. 2 (2001): 140–49; for more on the origins of this material, see H. Greche, N. Mrabet, and S. Zrira, “The Volatiles of the Leaf Oil of Cistus ladanifer L. var. albiflorus and Labdanum Extracts of Moroccan Origin and Their Antimicrobial Activities,” Journal of Essential Oil Research 21, no. 2 (2009), 166–73.
16 the “ floating gold” known as ambergris or “gray amber”: See Cynthia Graber, “Strange but True, Whale Waste Is Extremely Valuable,” Scientific American, April 26, 2007; Corey Kilgannon, “Gift of Petrified Whale Vomit Could Be Worth Its Weight in Gold,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 25, 2006, A22.
17 Jeanne Bécu, better known to history as the celebrated royal courtesan Madame du Barry: See Joan Haslip, Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty (London: Tauris Parke, 2005); Corey Kilgannon, “Please Let It Be Whale Vomit, and Not Just Sea Junk,” New York Times, December 18, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/nyregion/18whale.html?pagewanted=print; Kilgannon, “Gift of Petrified Whale Vomit.” See also Cynthia Graber, “Strange but True, Whale Waste Is Extremely Valuable,” Scientific American, April 26, 2007, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-whale-waste-is-valuable.
18 Joséphine doused everything in the palace at Versailles in the intimate smells of animal musk: Stamelman, Perfume, 120.
19 “the ‘Odor di femina’ of prostitutes and other women of easy virtue”: Stamelman, Perfume, 95.
20 “were marked as belonging to the marginal world of prostitutes and courtesans”: Stamelman, Perfume, 29.
21 Women “of good taste and standing” wore “only [the] simple floral scents”: Stamelman, Perfume, 95.
22 So keen was her nose … the way some of those other kept women smelled made her nauseous: Madsen, Chanel, 38.
23 women with the childish bodies known as fruits verts–green fruits: Madsen, Chanel, 36; for its origins in erotic literature of the period, see, for example, Alphonse Momas, Green Girls (Paris: Renaudie, 1899); or the pseudonymous “Donewell,” Green Girls (Paris: Bouillant, 1899), cited in Peter Mendes, Clandestine Fiction in English 1800–1930, A Bibliographical Study, Scolar [sic] Press (Aldershot, UK, 1993), 312; thanks to Stephen Halliwell, Christine Roth, and the Victoria listserv for this reference.
24 what was titillating wasn’t women who looked like men, “but rather like children”: Alison Laurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Random House, 1981), quoted in Davis, Classic Chic, 163.
25 Victor Margueritte’s scandalously erotic novel La Garçonne: Victor Margueritte, La Garçonne (New York: A. Knopf, 1923; Paris: E. Flammarion, 1922; with illustrations by Kees van Dongen).
1 She liked that Boy smelled of “leather, horses, forest, and saddle soap”: Madsen, Chanel, 49; details of Coco Chanel’s early life here and following drawn from the various biographies cited above.
2 Virginia Woolf would make the bold assertion that “On or about December 1910 human character changed,” bringing along with it sweeping changes in “religion, conduct, politics, and literature”: Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” in Mitchell A. Leaska, ed., The Virginia Woolf Reader (San Diego: Harcourt, 1984), 194.
3 the initial lease on her boutique on rue Cambon had in it a clause: Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, 30.
4 Fragrance had already made the young Corsican entrepreneur François Coty … one of France’s richest men: Roulhac B. Toledano and Elizabeth Z. Coty, François Coty: Fragrance, Power, Money (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2009), 24.
5 Inspired by the “heavily perfumed odalisques in Scheherazade,” it was a sultan’sfantasy: Christine Mayer Lefkowith, Paul Poiret and His Rosine Perfumes (New York: Editions Stylissimo, 2007), 36; also the source of details on the launch of Parfums de Rosine below. Dana Thomas, speaking with perfumer Jean Kerléo, reports that Poiret may have developed before Nuit Persanes a fragrance called Coupe d’Or (Golden Cup), also suggestive of oriental fantasy. See Dana Thomas, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (New York: Penguin, 2007), 141.
6 That summer evening, on June, 24, 1911, the warm air was alive with the sound of low Persian music: The party is described by Paul Poiret in his memoirs; see Paul Poiret, The King of Fashion: The Autobiography of Paul Poiret (London: V & A Publishing), 2009.
7 Maurice Babani became the second couturier to launch a signature scent: Marie-Christine Grasse, Elisabeth de Feydeau, and Freddy Ghozland, L’un des sens. Le Parfum au XXème siècle (Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 2001), page for 1921.
8 bestselling book, Modern Dancing, written by the couple of the hour, Verne and Irene Castle: Vernon and Irene Castle, Modern Dancing (New York: Harper, 1914); see also Eve Golden, Vernon and Irene’s Ragtime Revolution (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007).
9 just because he and Coco were in love didn’t mean that Boy didn’t have a stable of mistresses: Baillén, Mademoiselle Chanel, 20; Haedrich, Coco Chanel, 76.
10 she could afford to treat herself to a seaside villa in the south of France and a “little blue Rolls”: Davis, Classic Chic, 169.
11 “The war helped me,” Chanel later remembered. “Catastrophes show … I woke up famous”: Haedrich, Coco Chanel, 95.
12 the city was still filled with many of the two million American soldiers: Toledano and Coty, François Coty, 24.
13 large fragrance companies like Bourjois and Coty had begun setting up offices in the United States by the 1910s: On the history of the French perfume industry and the American markets, see Toledano and Coty, François Coty; Geneviève Fontan, Générations Bourjois (Toulouse, France: Arfon, 2005); Morris, Fragrance; Harvey Levenstein, We’ll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France Since 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and Helen M. Caldwell, “1920–29: The Decade of the French Mystique in the American Perfume Market,” http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/charm/CHARM%20pro-ceedings/CHARM%20article%20archive%20pdf%20format/Volume%20 4%201989/259%20caldwell.pdf.
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