Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

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.” 7The 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.

The gossips, meanwhile, assumed that Gabrielle’s feelings for Marie-Hélène went beyond simple affection. The other models believed, too, that they were lovers. One of them says, “At any rate that’s what was being said in the cabine (the model’s dressing room). It didn’t shock me at all, I thought it was very natural.” 8Gabrielle stoutly denied the rumors, saying, “You must be crazy — an old garlic like me. Where do people get those ideas from?” This was not the first time such rumors had been abroad about Gabrielle, and over the years, they would persist. Neither does one believe that Gabrielle really cared that much. For more than fifty years she had been the subject of gossip, and she had never let it make any difference to the way she chose to lead her life. And while Women’s Wear Daily journalist Thelma Sweetinburgh would say that Gabrielle’s bisexuality “was a sort of known thing,” a young French woman on the staff of American Vogue at the time remembers, “I had to go once to see her, and was told to be careful. I believed, and all others did, too, that Chanel was bisexual. One assumed it to be the case. British and French laws were different. It wasn’t illegal in France and people were just less fussed about it really.” 9

Assisted by her atelier and her mannequins, Gabrielle had returned from Switzerland with the intention of overcoming her opponents: those who reviled her war record and those who believed her work was now part of history. And during the course of 1954, what had at first appeared a disaster was set to become Gabrielle’s triumph. In November 1954, Elle put Suzy Parker on its cover in a seductive red Chanel suit and a pillbox hat, all trimmed around in fur.

As Gabrielle’s success became undeniable, she was asked why she had returned. She replied, “I was bored. It took me fifteen years to realize it. Today, I prefer disaster to nothingness.” Laying bare the drive that almost became her curse, in the years without work, Gabrielle had been lost, up against her demons and her loneliness. But by 1957, she was sailing triumphantly for America.

This was supposedly to accept what was then America’s greatest fashion accolade, the Neiman Marcus Fashion Oscar, in Dallas. However, while Dior had been awarded the Oscar before her, and Gabrielle had refused to follow in his footsteps, she allowed herself to be enticed to America because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Neiman Marcus stores. As ever, alert to a publicity opportunity, she agreed to an interview with The New Yorker. Gabrielle informed the reporter that, in 1954, her reaction to her initially poor reception — everywhere except America — had been defiance: “I thought, I will show them! In America, there was great enthusiasm. In France I had to fight. But I did not mind. I love very much to battle. Now, in France they are trying to adapt my ideas. So much the better!”

Succumbing to Gabrielle’s wiles, the reporter wrote:

We’ve met some formidable charmers in our time, but none to surpass the great couturier and perfumer, Mlle Gabrielle Chanel, who came out of retirement… to present a collection of dresses and suit designs that have begun to affect women’s styles every bit as powerfully as her designs of thirty years ago… She was fresh from three strenuous weeks here in Dallas… at seventy-four, Mlle Chanel is sensationally good-looking, with dark-brown eyes, a brilliant smile, and the unquenchable vitality of a twenty-year-old… “I liked very much Texas. The people of Dallas, Ah, je les aime beaucoup. Très gentils, très charmants, très simples.”

Not long after this, Bettina Ballard wrote of her disappointment that many women no longer appeared to think for themselves, that “their very conformity in wearing what the stores or magazines tell them to, proves their lack of personal interest. They don’t mind spending money; it is the time and the boredom of shopping they resent. If anyone will take the burden off their shoulders they are happy.” Ballard cites the then new notion of personal dressers, describing it as like “eating pre-digested breakfast food. Imagine a Daisy Fellowes or any of the pre-war ladies of fashion allowing anyone to choose a handkerchief for them! Fortunately for those who work in fashion, women now ask for nothing better than to be led, bullied, dictated to, and given as little freedom of choice as possible.” 10Ballard appealed to them, saying that they were the ultimate critics, they shouldn’t always listen to the “experts’ and should think for themselves. She went on to say:

Another proof of this hidden power is the way women took the Chanel look to their hearts and bodies. It is true that the press, particularly Vogue , spread the word… that Chanel was back designing after fifteen years, but left to the press, the rebirth of the Chanel look would have lasted at the very most two seasons. By the very laws of change, the press, the manufacturers, and the stores, would not have dared to go on promoting this look season after season, if women hadn’t found Chanel completely to their taste and stubbornly demanded more of her type of clothes. 11

Meanwhile, Gabrielle continued beguiling the New Yorker reporter with her undimmed allure. Flicking the ash off the last drags of her cigarette, she said:

As for myself, I am not interested any more in 1957. It is gone for me. I am more interested in 1958, 1959, 1960. Women have always been the strong ones in the world. Men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them in her arms as an infant. Women must tell them always they are the ones. They are the big, the strong, and the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones… It is the truth for me. 12

Having first said she was “too tired, too bored,” Gabrielle agreed to attend a dinner given for her by the famously suave and yet eccentric Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, whom she had known since the thirties. Gabrielle would only attend on condition that the evening would be intimate and she wouldn’t feel obliged to speak. Accompanied by someone Vreeland described as a “very charming Frenchman,” once there, Gabrielle spoke without ceasing. Halfway through the evening, she asked if “Helena” could join them. When Helena Rubinstein arrived, she and Chanel withdrew to Vreeland’s husband’s study. After some time, their hostess went in to see if they were all right: