Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

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.” 3Afterward, 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 ability 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.