Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

… seized by a passion for [him]. He was wicked. He fascinated me the way a hawk would; he filled me with a fear. I could feel it when he came in: something would curl up in me; he’d arrived. I couldn’t see him yet, but already I knew he was in the room. And then I saw him. He had a way of looking at me… I trembled. 5

Misia had observed this attraction between her two friends, and did her best to foil any real intimacy developing between them. But any control she might previously have exerted over Gabrielle had evaporated when Gabrielle wrote the check for Diaghilev’s presentation of Rite of Spring. Characteristically, Gabrielle was not particularly concerned by the idea of Picasso’s wife in the background, and saw Picasso at his apartment on the rue de la Boétie. Developing her “passion,” they spent the odd night — perhaps more — together at the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. But with Picasso always quick to demand sexual and emotional subservience from his women, and Gabrielle being in many ways just as intense and formidable a character as he was, this affair could have been only a brief one.

In 1921, when Vogue commented that “the couturiers are still embroidering their way to success,” Dmitri Pavlovich’s sister, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, took advantage of the trend. Marie Pavlovna was short of funds — like all the Russian émigrés — and on the spur of the moment suggested to Gabrielle that she could make the embroidery for her clothes at a better price. Gabrielle was surprised at the suggestion but agreed that Marie should try. Despite Marie’s personal hardship and losses, her attempts at adapting to her fate were impressive. Describing the Russian nobility’s plight, she said they had been “torn out of our brilliant setting… still dressed in our fantastic costumes. We had to take them off… make ourselves other, everyday clothes, and above all learn how to wear them.”

In only three months, Marie Pavlovna had set up what became a highly successful wholesale workshop, Kitmir, with Russian women machine-embroidering clothes for couture houses and, in particular, the House of Chanel. Marie designed many of the embroideries herself, basing them on her memories from art school, a number of Russian motifs and new research.

It has been customary to say that Gabrielle began embroidering her clothing under the influence of her Russian lover, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. This is quite wrong. Gabrielle had come under the influence of the Russians — Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes and Stravinsky — before her affair with Dmitri; she had been decorating her clothes with embroidery since at least 1917. In addition, from contemporary descriptions, we see that it wasn’t only Gabrielle who used embroidery to decorate her clothing; so were some of her fellow couturiers.

While Marie Pavlovna marveled at seeing her embroideries worn by Gabrielle’s clients, sadly, there are very few examples of them still around. What is left to us from Marie, however, is one of the very best descriptions of Gabrielle at work. As Marie evokes the scene, we see how Gabrielle’s method of creating, first described by Marie-Louise Delay, in Biarritz, has remained quite unchanged. Gabrielle’s cutting, pinning and sculpting of a material on a real woman’s body would become famous — much later, in an age of male couturiers, designing by making drawings alone — for its singularity. In fact, this had been the traditional dressmakers’ accustomed method of working.

After Gabrielle had draped her mannequin with a fabric, in order to see its fall and movement, she would then work in another material, such as a fine calico, until she was satisfied with her design on the girl’s body. From this first model, called a toile, the real material would be cut out by the premières and made into the final garment. In Marie Pavlovna’s description, we see how a real and beautiful female body was and would always remain an essential part of Gabrielle’s inspiration. The girl’s shape and coloring were all part of the inspiration for her transformation of a piece of material into something that could be worn. (She insisted that her mannequins be very slim, and almost all were dark haired, like her.) Marie Pavlovna described her fascination with the way her embroidered materials were transformed into clothes:

For several years to come I watched Chanel’s creative genius… She never designed anything on paper and would make a dress either according to an idea already in her head or as she proceeded. I can still see her sitting on her stool… with a log fire burning… she would be dressed in a… dark skirt and a sweater, with the sleeves pushed up above her elbows…

The models would be called in one by one from the landing outside… sometimes for hours in various stages of undress… A girl would walk into the room and up to Mlle Chanel, who sat… with a pair of scissors in her hand.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle.”

“Bonjour Jeanne.”

This was the only moment when Chanel would look up at the model’s face… As the girl approached, Chanel, with her head slightly bent to one side, would take in the first impression. Then the fitting began… The fitter standing beside her handed her the pins. No one spoke except Chanel, who kept up a steady monologue. Sometimes she would be giving instructions, or explaining some detail. Sometimes she would criticize and undo the work… already done. The old fitter listened to all, in silence, her face impenetrable… Chanel, intent on her work… talked on without taking notice of anybody.

I had seen people occupying great offices… had listened to orders being given by those whose birth or position gave them the right to command. I had never yet met with a person whose every word was obeyed and whose authority had been established by her own self, out of nothing. 6

At about five o’clock, coffee was brought in, sometimes with sandwiches. If the day’s work was complete, Gabrielle stood up, stretched, and the models, condemned to wait outside, were finally permitted to leave. If the pressure was on, Gabrielle gulped down her coffee then took up her work once more. One or two “obsequious executives and an occasional friend sat around on the carpet” while Gabrielle held forth indefatigably. “Discussing everything and everybody with immense assurance, she dispensed strong opinions on people and events; these opinions could just as quickly be reversed. Forging on, her power of persuasion was amazing.”

Maurice Sachs, an ambitious young con man who sometimes acted as Cocteau’s secretary got himself small writing commissions and, later in the decade, became an astute chronicler of his times. In his portrait of Gabrielle, he said that she “created a feminine personage that Paris had not known before.” He was surprised at “how small she was. She was very slim; the line of thick black hair was low, her eyebrows met over the nose and when she laughed her eyes [were] hard and sparkling.” Commenting that she “almost always’ wore simple black clothes, he said:

She put her hands in her pockets [then still an unusual thing for a woman to do] and began to speak. The flow of her words was extraordinarily fast, rushing forward, but she laid out clearly what she had in mind. She had none of the circumlocution, and fabricated asides that so often make a woman halt at incidental subjects and never reach the target of their conversation. Her train of thought was utterly clear… She had great practical sense; she liked to manage, to organize, to put in order and to be in charge. 7

Gabrielle had a redeeming contradictory trait, and one particularly rare in people who are controlling. An old employee would say that “she hated things which were planned. She didn’t have this notion of organization like we do.” And Jean Cocteau once said, “She has, by a kind of miracle, worked in fashion according to rules that would seem to have value only for artists.” 8