Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

In Biarritz, where the balmy weather made the season pretty well continual, and where sports and youthful activities had not long since become the order of the day, Gabrielle saw her clothes fulfilling a hitherto unrecognized need. She also sensed that time was of the essence and, for the first time, pushed on without Adrienne.

When the frantic preparations were at an end and Gabrielle threw open her sumptuous maison de couture , she was taken aback at the enthusiasm that greeted her new business. The highly priced accessories and chic day clothes for tennis, golf or swimming; the ensembles for the casino or the races; and the new evening dresses she had designed for the resort’s hectic nightlife, all dazzled her excited clients.

What Gabrielle offered was quite different from the overt luxury and opulence hitherto expected of an upmarket boutique. What her clients now found was what Gabrielle’s head of workrooms, Marie-Louise Delay, later described as the “sensational quality of unparalleled simplicity and chic.” This, Marie-Louise said, was “so different from Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet.” The Maison Chanel, with Antoinette greeting the clients, was overwhelmed by orders. They came from Bilbao, San Sebastián, Biarritz, Madrid, Paris, other French cities and also farther afield. Europeans, bored by the dullness of war, could afford to ease their tedium in one of the last outposts where luxury remained the highest priority.

While Gabrielle and Marie-Louise Delay were organizing the seamstresses to work as fast as they could, Antoinette returned from Paris with several others she had brought back from the boutique in rue Cambon, itself already busy. From the outset, Gabrielle used as much cotton and jersey in Biarritz as she was now using at the salon in Paris. While her lease on rue Cambon forbade her to make dresses, jersey was considered such a lowly material, not previously used for them, that, apparently, it didn’t count. 4

Gabrielle called in her acquaintances and friends: Marthe Davelli became a devoted client and brought along other singers and actresses, while the powerful socialite Kitty Rothschild kept up her influence on French women staying at Biarritz. Some of the most significant clients for Gabrielle’s luxurious new shop came, however, from just across the border in Spain. Both the Spanish aristocracy and several members of the royal family were much taken with her stylish clothes. Indeed, in that year, 1915, the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar stated that “the woman who doesn’t have at least one Chanel is hopelessly out of the running.” 5In February 1916, the authoritative Women’s Wear Daily reported that in France, “It is not unusual for smart women to place orders for three or four [Chanel] jersey costumes in different colors at one time.”

While Gabrielle was kept tremendously busy with her most ambitious undertaking so far, Arthur was once again back at Baroness de la Grange’s château, experiencing the vicissitudes of war. In the first days of August 1915, a wretched experience badly unsettled him, giving a small insight into the strain of life near the front. The baroness would record that

A car driven by Captain Capel skidded… and was hurled against a peasant’s cart. The shaft struck poor Hamilton-Grace full in the chest and flung him out on the road. [It] was not fully realized for a moment, and when they ran back to help him he was already dying. Captain Capel was nearly out of his mind with despair. Luckily, my nephew, Odon de Lubersac, his friend… prevented another misfortune…

The coffin was borne by the men… and the heavy tread of spurred boots rang like a knell on the paved road… That same evening the Cavalry Corps left here. After nine months together, we have become great friends… and my adieux were full of regret. 6

When the baroness wrote that her nephew had “prevented another misfortune,” she meant that Arthur was in such distress that if, at that moment, he hadn’t been prevented, he might well have shot himself. One wonders whether he confided this sad episode to Gabrielle. Or had the war, which kept so many couples apart, already inculcated the need for a new kind of emotional self-sufficiency? While we will never know how much Arthur confided his troubles to Gabrielle, we do know that, notwithstanding their separation, she gained immeasurably from Arthur’s support and confidence in her abilities.

In spite of Arthur’s inherited wealth, as we saw, he chose to make money. He told Gabrielle that it wasn’t out of greed. At first he had been driven to do it for personal reasons, but in these times, it was becoming something he did for his country. At the same time, his own instinct for business was remarkable, and in the previous couple of years, Arthur had shown himself to be an entrepreneur of genius. (This included his advice to Gabrielle.) His fleet of ships carried coal to France at such a rate for vital manufacture and heating that soon he was dubbed King Coal.

Distance, perforce, may have made conversations rare between Arthur and Gabrielle about how and where to proceed next, but those conversations they were able to have were of great import. Gabrielle’s lover encouraged her entrepreneurial spirit and confirmed his faith in her by continuing to contribute to the large finances necessary to make that spirit flourish.

Gabrielle was fully conscious that Etienne Balsan had enabled her to leave behind her background and make the first significant steps toward her redefinition. She also knew perfectly well that without Arthur’s backing and connections, she could have achieved little more. However, while she never forgot that her great self-belief was fostered in these early years more than anything by the support of a remarkable and powerful man, no amount of support would have helped if she hadn’t possessed exceptional gifts and an extraordinary dedication to work. In years to come, she would say, “To begin with you long for money. Then you develop a liking for work. Work has a much stronger flavor than money. Ultimately, money is nothing more than the symbol of independence.” 7

Meanwhile, the orders flew in and Gabrielle sent her première , Marie-Louise Delay, to Paris, where she was in charge of an atelier in which sixty people worked making Chanel couture for Spain. The Spanish court “bought dresses by the dozen. Soon I was one of five forewomen,” said Marie-Louise. 8With five workrooms working for her, Gabrielle still chose everything herself: “laces, ornaments, colors. She always chose the most beautiful tones among the different pastel shades that the Lyon and Scottish dyers could produce in silk and wool. Our workrooms were like a fairyland, a veritable rainbow.” 9

By late 1916, Gabrielle’s archrival, Poiret, had directed his efforts toward the army and successfully redesigned its greatcoats to reduce their cost. Whatever Poiret’s patriotic labors, Gabrielle had, meanwhile, effectively lost her rival and now appeared unstoppable in the field of wartime fashion. At this point, she had more than three hundred people working under her command.

Clearheaded and decisive, Gabrielle had already arrived at her own working methods. Marie-Louise recalled how she “never set foot in the workrooms. She would call us together to tell us what she wanted after she had chosen the fabrics.” While admiring Gabrielle’s ability to evoke and describe what she wanted, her première also believed that her lack of technique sometimes created misunderstandings. When this happened and they made something Gabrielle didn’t like, she didn’t hide her frustration.

Although Marie-Louise believed that Gabrielle’s lack of technique led her to compensate with an unsettling need to demonstrate her authority, Marie-Louise was in awe of what she described as “her innate taste.” Whatever the première ’s criticisms, she remained impressed by her employer’s “audacity and incredible nerve, especially since she was a milliner and knew little about dressmaking.” 10She would add that Gabrielle’s method “must have had something good in it, since we made such admirable things.” As for Gabrielle herself, Marie-Louise found her “extraordinarily chic. You should have seen her, getting out of her Rolls-Royce in front of the firm on the stroke of noon, for she had… acquired a Rolls with a chauffeur and footman. She was a queen!” 11