Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

Gabrielle was superstitious, and it is said that a gypsy had told her that five would be her lucky number. Her zodiac symbol, Leo, is the fifth sign, and she may well have known that five — signifying the cosmos for the old alchemists — was the quintessential number. The story that she never forgot the five-sided star, laid out in the floor mosaic at the convent at Aubazine, may be wishful thinking on the part of Gabrielle’s more recent followers. Whatever the true source of her superstition, she believed with a passion that the number five brought her luck.

Gabrielle and Beaux had discovered in each other the perfect partner. Beaux’s awareness of the cultural and artistic changes taking place around him had undoubtedly fed into his creation. Meanwhile, Gabrielle was asking for exactly what Beaux achieved: an exclusive synthesis of nature. Nevertheless, even if the story that her questing intelligence enabled her to make a suggestion here or there is true — she would later comment, “How I annoyed him”—in the end it is Beaux who must take by far the greater credit for creating Gabrielle’s perfume. This perfume has acquired such status in the Chanel Company that today it is referred to as their “treasure.”

Gabrielle and Beaux’s relationship was, though, complementary. Faced as we are with the myth constructed so carefully around № 5, we will never know if it was Gabrielle or Beaux who initiated the idea at the heart of the perfume’s mystique: a fragrance that smelled of a synthesis of “woman.” For Gabrielle, this meant a perfume symbolizing modern woman: in other words, herself. When Beaux told her that the perfume’s large number of rare ingredients, especially the jasmine, would make it “very expensive,” she is supposed to have said, “In that case, add more of it. I would like to create the most costly perfume in the world.” 8

With Gabrielle’s sensitivity to her times, her instincts had told her years ago that the manner in which she presented what she sold would be essential to its success. And by 1922, Gabrielle herself had undoubtedly become a crucial part of her message. Her edgily fashionable clothes, her short hair (in 1921, still seen by many as outrageous), her possessions, her lovers, her independence — in all this Gabrielle was in the vanguard of her times. In short, while the private lives of the rich and famous were respected infinitely more than today, Gabrielle was nonetheless becoming fascinating to those who had never met her. In the style journals, “Gabrielle Chanel” had previously been mentioned as the name of the designer who had made this or that highly sought-after dress or hat. Now she was unique among the couturiers in that she was in the society pages as much for herself. She was becoming as newsworthy as her illustrious clients. In the October 1921 issue of the magazine Femina, for example, we see Gabrielle in a photograph with Countess Doubazow, being filmed in “a beautiful garden in the environs of Biarritz.”

Gabrielle had pushed at the old boundaries of acceptability and forged new ones. If appearance is about communicating — and implicit in Gabrielle’s work was her ability to communicate — she was attempting to show women how best they could accommodate themselves to life in this radically altered modern world. What was the kind of appearance that would facilitate their handling of their new society? As Gabrielle said, she was developing her style according to her own needs and, implicitly, the needs of her fellow sex. If fashion articulates and illuminates the moment, Gabrielle did this to a radical degree. For rather than simply following and reflecting what was happening around her, she was ahead, articulating it.

Continually refining who she wanted to be, while never interested in being a revolutionary, Gabrielle was undoubtedly one of the first “modern women.” But when she said, “One day in 1919 I woke up famous,” 9she was being disingenuous. Gabrielle had achieved notice through years of hard work and careful management of her image. En route she had understood, like the best courtesans, that her image was something she must nurture. With this in mind, we find in a small and very rare black and beige catalogue not only the select array of perfumes and cosmetics that, in two years’ time — by 1924—Gabrielle would have developed for her clients, but also a document revealing the essential promotional psychology of the House of Chanel. 10

From the very first sentence of the little catalogue’s preface, we are introduced to the idea not only of outstanding luxury, but also that it is something only properly understood by the cognoscenti. Gabrielle draws in her followers by flattering them with the thought that they are the select few, who possess a secret “knowledge”:

Luxury fragrance: it is an expression that has lost much of its value through excessive and improper use… The Chanel fragrances, created exclusively for a clientele of connoisseurs devoted to the idea of… an original fragrance, different from all the others… Mademoiselle Chanel has succeeded in producing… fragrances that so eloquently evoke the Chanel style they rank among her finest creations. For an elite clientele price is a secondary consideration. Mademoiselle understands this… These ingredients are combined in the test tubes of a master perfumer…

The pride of Mademoiselle Chanel is to offer to a well-informed clientele, in simple bottles and cases adorned solely by their whiteness, precious drops of perfume…

It was never imagined that they could become luxury fragrances for the general public… They must remain exclusive… chosen by an exclusive public with refined tastes. 11

As with the alchemists, the Chanel client is enjoined to become part of a select, semisecret society, membership in which makes her exclusive. In the twenties, luxury perfumes were sold in bottles that were glassblowers’ “triumphs” of excess. Intended to signal the promise of the contents, they were in the shape of cupids, suggestive female figures, or were richly exotic, associating the perfume with the seductive mystery of the East.

The designer of the unmistakable Chanel № 5 “simple bottles and cases adorned solely by their whiteness” is yet another mystery. In 1973, Gabrielle’s lawyer of many years, Robert Chaillet, said that she designed the bottle herself: “As soon as she had found her perfume… she designed something supremely simple and therefore supremely sophisticated… The bottle has never changed. There is total recognition. We can run a full-page advert in the most fashionable magazines simply by photographing the bottle. We need no explanatory text.” 12What would twenty-first-century advertisers give for this level of brand recognition?

Another story tells how the first bottles were made by a company called Brosse, and that they were a copy of one of Arthur Capel’s toiletry containers. A third story has it that in 1924, when Gabrielle would make a deal securing distribution of her perfumes, the bottle was designed by Jean, the son of the fashionable artist Paul Helleu. This story may be the correct one, for we know that Jean Helleu began working for Gabrielle in the twenties, and remained with the Chanel Company for the rest of his working life.

According to Gabrielle’s lawyer, following her choice from Beaux’s samples, Gabrielle dined that evening with friends in the largest restaurant in Cannes. With an atomizer of Chanel № 5 on the table, she sprayed each person who walked past. “The effect was amazing. All the women who passed the table stopped, sniffing the air. We pretended not to notice.” 13

Asking Beaux to bottle samples for her, Gabrielle is said to have returned to Paris with a hundred in her luggage. When clients were in the fitting rooms, her assistants sprayed the perfume around. Particularly privileged clients were given a little sample bottle of № 5 as a present, and when Gabrielle was asked where it might be bought, she said she had just come upon it while away; she’d forgotten where. Meanwhile, she prodded Beaux for delivery of the larger quantities she had ordered, and was told that production could not be hurried. (To reiterate the beginning of this chapter, it is almost impossible that Dmitri introduced Gabrielle to Beaux in early 1921 and a few months later the perfume was in production.) Eventually, Beaux was ready. Gabrielle had by now cleverly drummed up sufficient interest among her clients that it appeared she was simply following their requests. In this way, Gabrielle now began selling small quantities of her perfume in all three of her salons, in Deauville, Biarritz and Paris.