Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

“The upheaval of values characterizes our era, some say. A somewhat naive statement, since only one value dominates our times: money — first through the plethora, then through its lack.” So wrote the diarist Elisabeth de Gramont, in her measured and sardonic tone, when the fevered pitch of the twenties finally reached its climax in November 1929, after the Wall Street crash. Gramont told how the preceding decade had seen “all values, the only ones left in this world… going up like a column of mercury,” and described the luxury cars — the Rolls-Royces, the Hispano-Suizas, the Mercedes — and the spendthrift lifestyle of the speculators and the war profiteers, and how artists called it a golden age because “from the masterpiece to the daubed, everything sold for exorbitant sums.” People previously of moderate means acquired new ambitions, buying châteaus, racing stables and yachts, and the price of property continued rising astronomically. When the banks failed, many people’s assets were reduced by as much as 90 percent.

A well-to-do Englishman, weathering the storm in a Paris hotel, described how a man shot himself in an adjacent room, an old American woman threw herself out of the window clutching her cat to her bosom, and another woman was saved from an overdose of sleeping pills only because her Pekinese barked and gave the alarm. The Englishman wrote, “I lost lots of money, and Coco Chanel was in a panic, while Misia Sert… remained quiet in her flat on the top floor of the Meurice,” 1the famous Parisian hotel.

Gabrielle was in certain panic in this period of great dearth, but she hid it well from her reduced number of clients, and still made money. This was helped by the fact that in the few short years since its introduction, Chanel № 5 had become the world’s highest-selling perfume.

Meanwhile, Adrienne Chanel’s faithful lover, Baron Maurice de Nexon, had finally been released by his father’s death to receive his inheritance and marry. And in April 1930, “Mademoiselle Gabrielle Chanel, dress designer, residing at 29 rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré,” was Adrienne’s chief witness at the quiet Paris wedding. On that day, Gabrielle’s thoughts must have dwelt on her initial fall from respectability, when she chose to live openly with her horse-mad Etienne Balsan. Did she regret? Probably not; nevertheless, she must have recognized the irony of having recently given up a man who had now married someone else, while her aunt was at last entering into her own marriage. Some of the old Royallieu friends, including Etienne, were present on that otherwise happy day.

That summer, Misia was Gabrielle’s almost permanent guest at La Pausa. While she had not recovered from her desertion by Sert (she never would), Misia nonetheless enlivened the atmosphere for the villa’s numerous guests. Dmitri Pavlovich was also in the south of France, and introduced Gabrielle to the present tsar of Hollywood, Samuel Goldwyn. As America’s economic crisis worsened with each month, Goldwyn was doing his best to counter it by turning Hollywood into an even greater star attraction than it had so far been. He engaged Gabrielle in earnest discussions. She was reluctant, but Goldwyn persevered: he wanted her to come to Hollywood.

When millions of Americans were now jobless, Goldwyn understood that reducing his costs would be a mistake: he must make his films even greater extravaganzas of escape. Recognizing the need to encourage a more middle-class audience to view his films, he believed that women would be more attracted if they knew they were to see the very latest fashions from the hand of the most famous Parisian couturier. He would pay Gabrielle the fabulous sum of one million dollars a year if she would visit Hollywood twice a year to dress his female stars, both on and off the stage. The great salesman Goldwyn failed to comprehend Gabrielle’s hesitation. She would be clothing the women who peopled the dreams of millions. They would not only advertise Chanel in every dream palace in the world, but also every time they set foot in any public place. Gabrielle finally consented.

In the spring of 1931, she set sail for Hollywood with Misia as her companion. It was an extraordinary enterprise, and there was no question that in these testing times, her enormous bursary would come in useful. Whatever came of Gabrielle’s attempt at dressing Hollywood, she and Misia would distract themselves together. Gabrielle was not at all concerned at the thought of dressing some of the most famous women in the world. But could she convince them her style was what they wanted? On her arrival in New York, word had already gone out, and Gabrielle was besieged by journalists. She told The New York Times :

It’s just an invitation. I will see what the pictures have to offer me and what I have to offer the pictures. I will not make one dress. I have not brought my scissors with me. Later, perhaps, when I go back to Paris, I will create and design gowns six months ahead for the actresses in Mr. Goldwyn’s pictures. I will send the sketches from Paris and my fitters in Hollywood will make the gowns. 2

The reporters found Gabrielle taken aback at the scores of interviewers and the reception committee crowding out her suite at the Hotel Pierre. She answered questions, declaring that longer hair would be back in style, that a chic woman should dress well but not eccentrically. She said that flower-based perfumes were not mysterious on a woman, that men who used scents were disgusting, and that where, previously, people of elegance had led fashion, it was now the young who set the tone.

In a second interview, Gabrielle spoke about giving the films fashion authority, although saying she wasn’t quite sure how it was going to work out once she arrived in California. The New York Times reporter found Gabrielle “a woman whose business is charm in dress. She does not make speeches, nor has she any theatrical affectation or exhibition — her answers are simple, direct.” Gabrielle said that she never saw her clients at her salon; that her work was “impersonal.” A gown was designed on a model, and that ended it for her. She seldom had the opportunity to see a frock, and even more seldom had the inclination. Typical Gabrielle! Once something was done, it was gone; she was bored and on to the next thing: “I needed to cleanse my memory, to clear from my mind everything I remembered. I also needed to improve on what I had done. I have been Fate’s tool in a necessary cleansing process.” 3

Her brief was to clothe the greatest stars of the time: Norma Talmadge, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Ina Claire and Greta Garbo. Interestingly, the records for rue Cambon show that the witty and intelligent Ina Claire had already become a private customer of Gabrielle’s, in 1926. Indeed, it was Ina Claire’s Chanel wardrobe that became one of the best advertisements for Gabrielle in the States. Meanwhile, the film and fashion worlds were laying bets on whether Gabrielle really could impose her fashion dictates on the notoriously petulant and self-willed actresses of the silver screen, a group known neither for their decorum nor for the elegance of their style.

When Gabrielle and Misia arrived in Hollywood, Gabrielle was once again mobbed by reporters. The French guests were entertained at a celebrity reception in Gabrielle’s honor, and here she met several of those actresses she was due to design for, such as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Claudette Colbert. The renowned directors George Cukor and Erich von Stroheim were also at the party, and von Stroheim charmed Gabrielle. She said of him, “Such a ham, but what style.” Meanwhile, Goldwyn’s chief publicist dubbed Gabrielle “the biggest fashion brain ever known.”