Beaux started producing Chanel No 5 while Coco explored packaging. At that time, most perfumes had romantic names such as Mille et Une Nuits (A Thousand and One Nights) and came packaged in containers etched with flowers or shaped like cupids. Coco preferred a plain, clear bottle revealing the “gold liquid within.” Her friend Misia Sert said, “We experimented with a very severe bottle, ultra-simple, almost pharmaceutical, but in the Chanel style and with the elegant touch she gave to everything.” A few weeks later the perfume reached selected stores. “The success was beyond anything we could have imagined,” recalled Misia. “It was like a winning lottery ticket.”
Coco asked Théophile Bader, co-owner of the department store Galeries Lafayette, to carry her perfume. He agreed but said his store and others would need a greater quantity than Beaux could produce in his lab. So he introduced her to his friends Pierre and Paul Wertheimer. The brothers had the largest perfume and cosmetics company in France and a network for distribution. The wealthy Wertheimers, who were Jewish, owned racehorses and arranged to have their first meeting with Coco at the elegant Longchamp Racecourse. Despite her anti-Semitism, Coco quickly came to a business agreement with them. The Wertheimers formed a partnership with Coco that lasted till the end of all their lives, but she and the brothers fought constantly.
Paul Wertheimer leading his winning colt, Lanvin, with jockey Rae Johnstone after victory in the English Derby at Epsom Downs, 1956
Coco signed away her interests, or ownership, in the perfume business, keeping 10 percent of the profits instead, because she wanted to focus on her fashions. Later she regretted the split and said, “I let myself be swindled.” She called Pierre “that bandit.” He called her that “bloody woman” and hired a lawyer just to deal with her. But she made a fortune. Chanel No 5 is still a worldwide bestseller.
Coco launched the perfume on the fifth of May in 1921, when she presented her fall dress collection. From then on, an assistant at rue Cambon sprayed Chanel No 5 in the entrance to the building a moment before Coco arrived. And in her luxurious private apartment, Coco scattered the perfume on the curtains and the hot coals in her fireplace.
The Wertheimers also started producing Chanel lipstick. Coco always wore an intense shade of bloodred on her lips and had made the first stick herself in a tube of waxed paper. Then she designed a push-up case in gray that was stamped with a single C, her first logo. In 1925 she redid her logo with interlocking Cs, which were not only her initials but also those of the union of Boy’s last name and hers: Capel and Chanel. The double C also recalled the loops in the windows at Aubazine.
GO AND FETCH MY PEARLS
Around this time, Coco dated Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a first cousin of the Russian tsar, Nicholas II. Dmitri had been involved in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, a charlatan who had befriended the Romanov imperial family. The Russian people had believed that Rasputin was ruling the country behind the scenes, and they had welcomed his death. But Tsar Nicholas punished Dmitri by ordering him to join the Russian Army at the Persian front. The Russian Empire and the British Empire were fighting the Ottoman Empire after their invasion of Persia (now Iran). Meanwhile, angry mobs rioted in Moscow, and in 1917 the Bolshevik Revolution began. The aristocracy of Russia fled for their lives.
Dmitri managed to make his way to London, then France. He had little money, but he had taken precious heirloom jewels with him, and he gave Coco ropes of pearls and gold chain necklaces. Pearls complemented her tanned skin and dark eyes and set off a simple black dress or a suit. In her opinion a suit was “naked” without jewelry. “Go and fetch my pearls,” she ordered a maid once. “I will not go up to the ateliers until I have them around my neck.”
Expensive jewelry does not improve the woman who wears it.
If she looks plain, she will remain so.
Dmitri’s gifts inspired her to start designing and selling costume jewelry, and she wore masses of fake pearls with the real thing. “I couldn’t wear my own real pearls without being stared at on the street,” she said, “so I started the vogue of wearing false ones.” Coco believed that jewelry should be worn as an ornament and not to flaunt wealth. “Expensive jewelry does not improve the woman who wears it,” she said. “If she looks plain, she will remain so.”
Coco wearing strands of fake pearls and costume jewelry bracelets, 1936
Through Dmitri, the composer Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Coco discovered Russian folk art, which influenced her fashion designs. In the early 1920s she entered what she termed her “Slav period,” using colorful Russian embroidery on plain black or neutral material. Dmitri also introduced her to his sister, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna.
After fleeing Russia, Marie had reunited with Dmitri. As a child, she had learned to sew, knit, and embroider. Exiled first in London and then in Paris, she needed a means of supporting herself, and made dresses. In 1921 she met Coco, hoping to get some useful suggestions for succeeding in the dressmaking business. “This unusual woman crossed my path at precisely the right time,” recalled Marie.
During a visit to Coco’s private studio on rue Cambon, Marie witnessed an argument between Coco and Madame Bataille, the woman who did embroidery for the House of Chanel. They were examining a crimson silk blouse that Madame Bataille had just finished based on a design Coco had found on Scottish sweaters. Coco refused to pay the high price Madame Bataille demanded, and Marie impulsively offered to do the job for less money. But the embroidery had to be done on a machine to produce the quantity Coco needed. So Marie quickly bought the simplest kind of embroidery sewing machine and learned how to use it. Three months later she delivered an embroidered blouse to Coco for the lower price. Coco bought the blouse and ordered many more.
Marie was thrilled. She hired three young Russian women to help her fill the orders and established a workshop that she named Kitmir, after a friend’s Pekinese lapdog.
In the beginning of January 1922 Coco was preparing her spring collection, to be shown on February 5. Coco didn’t sketch her designs. Instead, she worked with scissors hanging from a long white ribbon around her neck and cut, pinned, and shaped the muslin test garments (toiles) directly on the models.
Marie said, “I watched Chanel’s creative genius express itself through her fingers . . . I can still see her sitting on her taboret . . . She would be dressed in a dark skirt and a sweater. The models would be called in one by one . . . A girl would walk into the room and up to Mlle. Chanel, who sat with a pair of scissors in her hand. This was the only moment when Chanel would look up at the model’s face. Then the fitting began. The fitter standing beside her handed her the pins.”
Pushing and pulling the fabric, Coco often pricked a model with the pins. If the model yowled in pain, Coco laughed. “Stand straight, girl,” she would hiss through the pins in her mouth.
“No one spoke except Chanel,” wrote Marie. “Sometimes she would be giving instructions or explaining some detail. Sometimes she would criticize and undo the work already done. Chanel, intent on her work . . . talked on without taking notice of anybody.”
An embroidered silk crepe dress in the Slavic style for Chanel’s spring/summer collection, 1921
Back at Kitmir, Marie and her workers turned out blouses, tunics, and shift dresses in a Slavic style. One dress featured exquisite red and green embroidery bordering the short sleeves, V-neck, dropped waist, and shoulders. The back of the dress had rows of tiny green and red stitches running from the shoulders to the waist. The label read “Gabrielle Chanel,” written in yellow script on black cloth, with the word “PARIS” in capital letters. This was the way Coco marked her clothing at that time.
If you wish to do business, the first thing is to look prosperous.
On February 5, Marie hurried to rue Cambon for the showing and sat at the top of the mirrored staircase with Coco. At three o’clock the models “began to parade,” wrote Marie. “When the first dress appeared which had my embroidery on it I almost cried out lou
d.” By six o’clock the show had ended, and buyers were excitedly demanding the embroidered pieces.
The style became so popular that Coco introduced a version of the roubachka, the long, belted blouse worn by Russian peasant women. Magazines dubbed it “The Peasant Look.” Marie hired more workers and soon had fifty employees.
But Coco later claimed that she had set up the embroidery workshop and put Marie in charge. It pleased Coco, a descendant of peasants, to employ titled royalty such as the Grand Duchess Marie.
After Coco and Marie had presented their first showings of embroidered clothing, Coco criticized Marie’s dowdy appearance. “It is a great mistake for you to go round looking like a refugee,” said Coco. “If you wish to do business, the first thing is to look prosperous.” Coco taught Marie how to use makeup and said that her old-fashioned hairstyle resembled “a giant brioche on the top of her head.” Taking a pair of scissors, Coco hacked off Marie’s hair and gave her a short bob like her own. “When she had finished,” reminisced Marie, “we were equally dismayed at the result. But the damage was done, and ever since that day, my hair has been short. It took many weeks, however, before my hairdresser could make my head look to some degree presentable.”
However, Marie felt grateful to Coco for her advice and business and continued producing embroideries for her.
After Coco presented couture pieces for a new collection, dressmakers and manufacturers would turn out knockoff versions at lower prices. Buyers from department stores purchased originals and had them copied and produced in large numbers. “Come to my place and steal all the ideas you can,” Coco told the press. She knew that the cheaper imitations could never be mistaken for her superb tailoring and fine fabrics meant for rich clients, celebrities, and royalty.
Coco borrowed the Duke of Westminster’s coat on a chilly night at the Chester horse races, 1924.
Coco Chanel wearing her “sailor” outfit
In 1924 she became interested in British and Scottish tweeds when she began a romance with Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, the Second Duke of Westminster. The duke, nicknamed Bendor, was the richest man in Great Britain, but he liked to wear old jackets and faded golf sweaters. Coco dipped into his wardrobe and borrowed his tweed blazers, and then created feminine versions. Bendor bought a textile mill for her so she could manufacture her own wools for suits and coats.
In 1925 she introduced the prototype of what was to become the classic Chanel suit, with a collarless cardigan jacket, braided trim, patch pockets, and an A-line skirt. Bendor’s yacht, The Flying Cloud, gave her another idea. She designed flared pants like the ankle-length bell-bottoms worn by the crew, because she said it was the only way to comfortably climb on and off a boat. The style caught on and started a universal trend of women wearing trousers. Coco even designed a beret like the yachting caps Bendor gave to his guests, and she wore hers with a jeweled pin.
Bendor lavished magnificent jewels upon her: rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and more pearls. “It is disgusting to wander around loaded down with millions around the neck just because one happens to be rich,” she said. Coco kept most of the jewels locked up in a vault. Bendor’s gifts, however, inspired her to open costume jewelry workshops that produced imitations of the elaborate necklaces and cuffs.
Coco joined Bendor at his estate, Eaton Hall, or at one of his country houses whenever she could, and they went hunting and fishing. In 1927 at Bendor’s château in Mimizan, France, she met his friend Winston Churchill, the future prime minister. Churchill wrote to his wife, Clementine, “The famous Coco turned up & I took a great fancy to her—a most capable and agreeable woman. . . . She hunted vigorously all day, motored to Paris after dinner & is today engaged in passing and improving dresses on endless streams of mannequins. . . . Some have been altered ten times. She does it with her own fingers, pinning, cutting, looping, etc.”
Coco and her friends in the garden of her villa, La Pausa, 1938
Another time, Coco and Churchill were guests at Bendor’s Stack Lodge in Scotland. Churchill sent his wife a letter saying, “Coco is here . . . She fishes from morn till night & in two months has killed 50 salmon. She is [very] agreeable—really a [great] & strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire.”
Coco opened a boutique in London’s Mayfair district, near Bendor’s town house. Socialites and aristocrats became her clients, and her English country look was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
Vogue announced: “Tweeds have made the practical beautiful and the beautiful practical.”
Time magazine featured a story about Coco’s growing success, describing “the light boyish sweaters which form the sports costume of many an American and English woman.”
A story says Bendor paid tribute to Coco by having gold interlocking Cs embossed on all the black lampposts in the city of Westminster. Later the Westminster City Council insisted that CC stood for “City Council.” But it was also said that the duke’s family quashed the legend of Bendor’s homage to Coco.
Yet Bendor didn’t propose marriage, as she hoped he would. Despite his love for her, he wanted a son to inherit his estate. By 1928, Coco was forty-five years old and could not have a child. Bendor became engaged to a young English noble woman, and his romance with Coco ended. It was rumored that she was the one who rejected his proposal, saying, “There have been many Duchesses of Westminster, but only one Coco Chanel.” In later years she denied having said anything so “vulgar.” But she did say, “Salmon fishing is not a life. . . . I’ve always known when to leave.”
Coco bought a tract of land on the French Riviera at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin as a Mediterranean retreat. She hired an architect to study the orphanage at Aubazine where she had grown up, because she wanted to duplicate its serenity and simplicity and the stone staircase at the entrance. Her palatial villa, La Pausa, was finished in 1929, and she hosted lavish weekend parties. Guests included artist Salvador Dalí, who painted a still life there, L’Instant Sublime, that depicted a snail, a telephone receiver, and a drop of water about to fall on a frying egg. Winston Churchill was also inspired to paint at the villa and did watercolors.
Another guest, Bettina Ballard, a reporter for Vogue, admired Coco’s getup: “She wears navy jersey slacks with a slip-on sweater, and a bright red quilted bolero. Her red canvas espadrilles have thick cork soles—excellent for walking.” In the evening Coco appeared in black velvet slacks and cashmere sweaters, outfits that are still popular today.
TAKE OFF THE GIRDLE!
By now Coco was one of the richest women in the world and employed 2,400 workers in twenty-six different studios. In 1929, at the peak of her fame, the Wall Street stock market crashed in the United States. The Great Depression that followed affected Europe as well as America. World trade collapsed. German, French, and then British industrial production decreased. In America, businesses went bust, and eventually nearly thirteen million people were unemployed.
Friends said that Coco panicked but hid her anxiety. She lost some wealthy clients who could no longer afford her clothes, which were the most expensive in Paris. However, there were still people rich enough to order haute couture workmanship. Coco reduced the prices of her evening dresses by replacing expensive fabrics such as lace and chiffon with cotton and organdy. And the greatest part of her own fortune came from Chanel No 5. The fragrance had become the world’s bestselling perfume and provided a steady income.
I have said that black had everything. White too. They have an absolute beauty.
Ignoring the poverty found in France and elsewhere in the world, the “elegant” set in Paris continued to live the high life, including attending fancy-dress balls. In June 1930, socialites at the functions tried to outdo each other, and Coco designed many of their fantasy costumes. Some hosts asked guests to come disguised as someone that everyone knew by sight, and partygoers enjoyed cross-dressing. Journalist Janet Flanner wrote in The New Yorker, “Chanel did a land office business, cutting and fitting gowns for young men about town who app
eared as some of the best-known women.”
For another ball everyone was told to dress in white, and a number of women showed up in Coco’s gowns. Coco loved white for its purity and simplicity. She liked white as a contrast to tanned skin, like hers, and often ended the unveiling of a new collection by presenting three white evening dresses. White and black were her signature colors, an influence from her days at Aubazine. “Women think of every color, except the absence of colors,” she declared. “I have said that black had everything. White too. They have an absolute beauty.”
At one event Coco met movie producer Samuel Goldwyn. She knew he was Jewish, but, putting aside her prejudice, she said, “There are great Jews.” Goldwyn worried about dwindling ticket sales in America as the economic crisis worsened. He thought of luring middle-class audiences, especially women, to the movies by featuring the latest Paris fashions. So he invited Coco to come to Hollywood to design clothes for his stars on and off the stage. At first she refused, but when he promised to pay her a million dollars, she finally agreed and took Misia along as a traveling companion.
Back in 1927 Coco had designed a dress that actress Mary Pickford wore in a silent film called My Best Girl, about a young woman working in a five-and-dime store. Pickford’s demure black dress made of crepe de chine had a white lace collar. The schoolgirl look—a black dress trimmed with white collar and cuffs—influenced by Coco’s convent uniform, was one of her favorite styles. The color combination was ideally suited to movies, which were shot only in black-and-white at that time.
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