Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Gabrielle’s manservant, François Mironnet, was apparently at first informed he had “inherited Mademoiselle,” however, the document proving this was never found. The estate did, nonetheless, make an out-of-court settlement with Mironnet. Others who made claims on Gabrielle’s estate were not so fortunate. Over the years, her bankers and lawyers have maintained a stony silence over the Coga Foundation, and its function remains a mystery. So does the extent of Gabrielle’s personal fortune. In 1971, Mironnet claimed it was worth $1.5 billion. The Wertheimer family claimed it was $30 million. It has been estimated that, at the time of Gabrielle’s death, the House of Chanel brought in approximately $160 million annually.

Gabrielle’s manager was mistaken about her failure to contemplate a successor, because several years before her death she had discussed it with more than one friend. Where her manager had been correct was in Gabrielle’s inability to put anything into practice. The House of Chanel had become her final solace, her raison d’être. If she handed it over, there would be nothing left for her but to die. In avoiding choosing a successor, Gabrielle implicitly staved off death.

When it finally came, there was much doubt as to whether Chanel could continue without her. While the owner, Jacques Wertheimer — son of Gabrielle’s partner, Pierre, who had effectively bankrolled Chanel since 1954—wished to continue, Chanel couture was to languish for some time. In 1974, Jacques’s sons, Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, took over the running of the company. With the intention of maintaining Chanel as a family business, they refused to bring in shareholders; the number of outlets permitted to sell the perfumes was drastically reduced; Gabrielle’s policy of employing Chanel’s own perfumers, craftsmen and jewelers was continued, and large sums were spent on promotion.

For many years, the Wertheimers have been well served by a number of gifted employees, the most distinguished of whom have remained with the company for long periods, sometimes for most of their working lives. These include “the eye behind the image,” the late Jacques Helleu, Chanel’s artistic director, who oversaw the changing image of Chanel. While the most famous advertisement for Chanel was Marilyn Monroe’s quip “What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel № 5 of course,” Helleu used some of the world’s best photographers, such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, David Bailey, Luc Besson and Ridley Scott, to photograph and film some of the world’s most glamorous women — these included Catherine Deneuve, Candice Bergen, Carole Bouquet, Nicole Kidman, Audrey Tatou and Keira Knightley — in expensive and influential advertising campaigns. With their underlying theme of luxury and mystique, these highly successful promotions fulfilled Alain Wertheimer’s maxim: “The secret of advertising is to make it real and a dream at the same time.”

By the end of the twenties, Gabrielle and Beaux’s first perfume, № 5, had been so successful it became Gabrielle’s chief source of revenue. In more recent times, Chanel’s chief parfumeur , Jacques Polge, has ensured the continuing quality of this, the fragrance the company understandably refers to as its “treasure.” In his long years at Chanel, Jacques Polge — a gracious and abstracted man, who speaks of the “poetry of fragrance”—has admirably extended the company’s repertoire, with several renowned perfumes of his own. Among them are: Coco Mademoiselle, Chanel № 19 and Beige.

When Gabrielle told Beaux not to hold back on the costly ingredients for № 5, she instructed him to make it the most exclusive in the world. Sixty years later, Alain Wertheimer was determined to follow the same principle, and he set out to improve on what had become the perfume’s slightly flagging image of exclusivity. In time, this goal was to prove successful for the perfumes, jewelry and accessories. But for several years after Gabrielle’s death, the dress designers employed to take up her baton made the mistake of trying to emulate her. Admittedly, their task was a daunting one; a friend of Gabrielle’s remarked on the fact that “in the House of Chanel everything went through her, nothing could be conceived, let alone carried out, without her.” 2As it was, Chanel couture appeared to have lost its way.

Since before the Second World War, prêt-à-porter had been a growing challenge to the far greater but more time-consuming skills of haute couture, and after the war, a growing number of couture houses would be forced to close their doors. Following Gabrielle’s return in 1954, she herself had held out, but in 1977, Chanel took on a designer, Philippe Guyborget, to design prêt-à-porter. In 1983, the Parisian-trained couturier Karl Lagerfeld, then at the fashion house Chloé, was persuaded to take over this role. His rapid success led to an invitation from Chanel to design both their haute couture and prêt-à-porter. Speaking of the Wertheimers’ brief, that he “make something of Chanel,” Lagerfeld recalls their telling him that if he couldn’t, they would sell the company.

Young Lagerfeld had arrived in Paris from Germany in 1953 or 1954, intent on a career in fashion. He worked first as an illustrator for fashion houses, was taken on as an apprentice at Pierre Balmain, and then became a couturier at the house of Jean Patou. Lagerfeld’s first collection, in 1958, was poorly received; the second was praised as having a “kind of understated chic, elegance,” while in the following year, 1960, the designer produced “the shortest skirts in Paris.” This collection was criticized for being “more like clever… and immensely salable ready-to-wear, not couture.” Lagerfeld’s work was seen as good but not groundbreaking. For the next couple of years, he effectively dropped out; he has said he spent “a lot of time on beaches.”

By 1962, he was back in Paris, and for the next twenty years honed his skills as a freelance designer, collaborating simultaneously with numerous fashion houses, such as Chloé, Valentino and Fendi on prêt-à-porter and haute couture. In 1984, a year after he took over at Chanel, this phenomenally energetic designer also created his own label, Karl Lagerfeld, and continued forging his reputation, as one authority put it, “through consistently strong work for the numerous lines he produces every year.” For the rest of that decade, while his designs were not the only reason for Chanel’s growing profile, they were a major factor in its steady progress.

Lagerfeld says, “When I took over Chanel, no one wanted to work for an old company. I accepted against everyone’s advice, to breathe some life back into a house which was more than a Sleeping Beauty, it wasn’t trendy at all.” 3From the outset, he knew that “I must blow hot and cold. I must excite and enrage the high priestesses who’d say “Mademoiselle would turn in her grave.” He recalls his first few collections for Chanel with “very short skirts, very wide shoulders, oversized jewelry, a bit ‘too much’ of everything, but it was the right time to do it.” On another occasion, he describes having “to push it, nearly, I wouldn’t say into the vulgarity, but the eighties were not really about distinction.” Creating endless variations on Gabrielle’s signature themes, as the years passed, Lagerfeld wittily combined elements of street style with the simple elegance of Chanel classics.

His ability to reflect his times, combined with skilled manipulation of the grammar of Gabrielle’s design, enabled Lagerfeld to reinvigorate her design house with notable success. Throughout the nineties, the House of Chanel grew still more successful, and by 2001, Lagerfeld was being dubbed one of “the most high-profile designers of the previous twenty years.” But this, he says, has been easy, because no other fashion house has such immediately recognizable “elements” as Chanel. These are the markers, Gabrielle’s signature pieces, long ago core elements of twentieth-century women’s dress. Indeed, a woman’s wardrobe today is virtually unthinkable without, at the very least, one of Gabrielle’s innovations: a little black dress, costume jewelry, any bag with a shoulder strap, jumpers for women, trousers for women, suits for women, slingback shoes, a trench coat, a strapless dress and, finally, that perfume in its modernist bottle, so iconic it has remained virtually unchanged for ninety years.