Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Gabrielle saw Adrienne, and occasionally her brothers, who periodically called on her in rue Cambon. She regularly sent one of them a check, and looked after André, her dead sister Julia-Berthe’s son, mostly away at boarding school. Aside from this, Gabrielle now had very little to do with her extended family. With Antoinette’s death, one more connection with her childhood was lost, and she was a little more alone. Years later, in referring to her relations, Gabrielle would say that no one in her family grew old: “I don’t know how I escaped the slaughter.” 16

As Gabrielle made her secret journey through her past with Dmitri, their sojourn was concluding. Dmitri would write that Gabrielle was “sad that tomorrow our trip comes to an end.” With many miles ahead of them, on the final morning they were up early and drove through rain, then thick snow, until eventually halting for coffee to warm up. Setting off again, Dmitri wrote that “the highway was covered in snow, and the countryside looked Russian. It was rather sad and moving.” 17The weary travelers finally reached Paris, where Dmitri would again ask his diary why it was they had made that detour around Vichy.

Laughing off rumors of marriage to Gabrielle during his “adventure,” Dmitri was less sanguine about the rumor put around in their absence that she was keeping him. He did nonetheless go and see her the following evening. Moved by her inability to conceal “her sadness that our excursion had come to an end,” Dmitri didn’t leave her suite until two the next morning. The following afternoon, “She had cheered up but was nonetheless very touching.” 18

Work for Gabrielle had long since become a refuge and the place where she could put her feelings aside. She would say that work gave her energy. She had endured the emotional torments of the last two years or so and her creativity seemed unstoppable. The countesses Rehbinder, Castries, Sjorza, Noailles, Doubazow and Moustiers, the princesses Radziwill and Murat, Mme. Miguel Yturbe (wife of one of Gabrielle’s earlier admirers), the Honorable Mrs. Anthony Henley, Mlle. Gabrielle Davelli, Mlle. Cécile Sorel, Mlle. Gabrielle Dorziat and Misia Sert were only a selection of the society women and celebrities making their way to Gabrielle’s salon door.

In autumn 1920, Vogue had enthused over Gabrielle’s “perfect taste… and her extraordinary perception of the woman of today,” and discussed the variety of Gabrielle’s offerings. A particular cape, then the thing, was “a very smart affair of conservative lines but elaborated with a design in quilting which covers most of its surface… this is both warm and decorative.” Then there were “evening wraps, enveloping capes, superb manteaux of rich-toned velvets embroidered with gold and enriched with otter or sable, very simple in line,” and gowns of lace and tulle, and “sheath frocks.” “The embroideries which she uses are all designed for her, and her laces are unusual and distinctive.”

Over and again throughout these years, the magazines advised that because at Chanel there was what Vogue described as an “avoidance of extremes, each model at this house suits an amazing variety of types.” Saying that while Gabrielle followed principles that could at first be thought uninteresting — practicality and simplicity — the magazine admired her unerring ability to create “many new effects each season.” 1

Speaking of “eminently wearable and well-designed costumes,” there were “tailored suits in black, beige or grey.” And here we note the colors that were to become Chanel trademarks, establishing their place in her canon. In addition to the tailored suit, there was “the coat-frock, where the frocks cling without side-seams and close at the sides with embroidery or buttons.” Other frocks had loose backs “combined with a closely fitting front which follows the lines of the figure and emphasizes the absence of the corset.”

It was Poiret, not Gabrielle (as is often said), who first attempted to dispense with the corset. While apparently representing greater freedom, Gabrielle’s much straighter, shape-revealing twenties chemises, often made in diaphanous materials, would have been unthinkable for most women without a corset of some kind. Gabrielle may have been fairly ruthless in her attitude toward women who weren’t as slim as she, but she was also business-minded enough to realize that not everyone had her girlish figure. Consequently, she sold corsets. For Gabrielle, they had the dual purpose not only of pulling in any “excess” plumpness but also of flattening the bust. She had set out to design because she thought contemporary dress unsuitable for the new times; her clothes were in essence made for herself. Thus Gabrielle’s designs looked far the best on androgynous figures like her own.

Gabrielle’s vacation with Dmitri Pavlovich had helped her still unsteady sense of equilibrium, and in this improved state she was better able to put into effect one of the most important undertakings of her life. At some point between the previous autumn and now, the spring of 1921, Gabrielle had met another young man. His name was Ernest Beaux. Beaux was not to become her lover. Instead, with Gabrielle, he would create Chanel № 5, destined to become the most famous perfume in the world. While so much about the first half of Gabrielle’s life is cloaked in uncertainty, the story of this most iconic of all perfumes — created at around this time — is a major factor in the construction of her myth. A myth, of course, is not the same thing as history, and the history of Chanel № 5 proves stubbornly resistant to reconstruction.

Yet № 5’s appearance is also typical of an enduring element in the allure of all great perfumes: the secrecy surrounding their ingredients and the manner of their creation. The provenance of any fine perfume is better thought of with reference to the old alchemists, who in the manner of all secret societies, ensured the idea of exclusivity by keeping their “knowledge” hidden. The alchemist’s exalted claims were never made by the perfumers, but there were parallels. Certainly, the perfumers understood that while they dealt in an art whose methods were practical ones, the process and the results were often intangible.

Whatever has been written or said to the contrary, it is not actually known how or when Gabrielle Chanel met the gifted young perfumer Ernest Beaux. Even more significantly, no one really knows exactly when Chanel № 5 was created. In fact, from its two creators’ first meeting to the perfume’s inception, its production and its very first sales, Chanel № 5 is shrouded in mystery. But the main reason for this is because, from the outset, Gabrielle and Beaux understood that this was crucial.

The story has traditionally been told in the following way: Gabrielle had decided she wanted to have a perfume as an accompaniment to her clothes, and during the summer of 1920, Dmitri Pavlovich introduced her to Ernest Beaux, whom he had known through Beaux’s connection with the Russian court. Together, Gabrielle and Beaux now set out to create Gabrielle’s perfume. By early 1921, Chanel № 5 was in production and being launched. The month is often given as May. However, remembering that Dmitri’s diary tells us it wasn’t until a year later — February 1921—that he himself met Gabrielle, it is almost impossible that Gabrielle and Beaux could have made, packaged and launched their perfume between, approximately, February and May of that year. Either Dmitri did not introduce Chanel to Beaux, or if he did, the perfume had to have been launched later.

While Chanel has become one of the world’s most famous “brands,” without № 5’s high profile, most of us might barely have heard of Coco Chanel, or her part in revolutionizing women’s lives. Although Gabrielle had already begun to formulate elements of her myth by 1921, it was in turn furthered by the creation of Chanel № 5. Both have been perpetuated by the Chanel Company. With № 5’s given date of creation—1921—mired in uncertainty, who was Ernest Beaux, the man who helped make the first Chanel perfume such an outstanding success?