Lisa Chaney - Coco Chanel - An Intimate Life

In January 1939, Franco’s fascists’ success had driven almost half a million Republican soldiers and civilians to flee across the border into France; in February, the Republican government had followed them into exile. With the army routed, Madrid was left to the fascists and starvation. In March, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; three weeks later, Mussolini invaded Albania, opening up a route into Greece. France’s coalition leader, Edouard Daladier, declared the introduction of emergency powers, and began talks with Britain and the Soviet Union on an alliance to prevent Hitler from invading Poland. To the consternation of London and Paris, Stalin now chose to sign a nonaggression treaty with Germany. This gave him the possibility of regaining territories in the Baltic, Romania and Poland, taken from Soviet Russia at the end of the First World War, and also meant that the balance of power had swung in Germany’s favor.

No sooner had Gabrielle returned to Paris from La Pausa than Daladier called for general mobilization. Shortly afterward, the brilliantly authoritative New Yorker correspondent in Paris for fifty years, Janet Flanner, wrote of a transformed capital:

The greatest emotion was centerd around the Gare de l’Est, where thousands of soldiers have entrained for the northern frontier… Mostly they have been in uniform and steel helmets… Also, mostly their mothers, wives, fathers, and sisters have shed no tears, till the troop trains have pulled out… There are no flags, flowers or shrill shouts of vive la patrie! as there were in 1914. Among the men departing… the morale is excellent but curiously mental. What the men say is intelligent not emotional.”… Let’s stop living in this grotesque suspense and get it over once and for all.”… Few Frenchmen are thrilled to go forth to die… Yet all… seem united in understanding that this war, if it comes, is about the theory of living and its eventual practice. 1

Among the millions called up was Gabrielle’s nephew, André Palasse, whom she asked to visit her en route for induction into the army. André’s health had never been robust, and Gabrielle was concerned. As predicted by those in France and Great Britain who believed that appeasement was a waste of time, Hitler now invaded Poland. On September 3, Britain and France together declared war on Germany.

Three weeks later, Gabrielle put into effect a most dramatic response to the announcement of war: she closed down her couture house and laid off most of the workforce. Only the boutique at 31 rue Cambon would remain open, selling the perfumes and jewelry. Gabrielle was now almost unanimously reviled. Many of her workers believed her decision was in retaliation for their strike action in 1936; others felt that she was deserting her “responsibilities.” Some in Paris whispered that she had felt eclipsed by Schiaparelli. Speaking of the plight of her workforce, the trade union tried to dissuade her. When this failed, they appealed to her sense of responsibility to her customers. Gabrielle remained adamant. After a few weeks, the government stepped in and begged her: would she not work “for the prestige of Paris?” She said that no one could make her work against her will. She would not reopen the House of Chanel.

It has been said that having profited from the last war, Gabrielle had decided against it in this one to atone for her guilt. More convincing is her occasional comment that while making her name in the last war, she didn’t feel there would be a place for fashion in this one. She intended tidying up the loose ends of her business, and whenever the hostilities ended, would move on to something else: “I had the feeling that we had reached the end of an era. And that no one would ever make dresses again. [She was referring to haute couture.] 2

Gabrielle was no longer young, but her intuitions were still remarkably accurate. With hindsight, one can see that the war was indeed to strike the death knell for the great tradition of haute couture. From the monastery at Solesmes, meanwhile, her friend Pierre Reverdy wrote approvingly of her actions, saying, “The point in life… is to find equilibrium in what is inherently unstable.” 3

While soldiers from opposing armies faced one another across the Rhine, Gabrielle heard from her nephew that he was in the first line of defense. Gabrielle now set about severing all but two or three links with her past: she wrote to her brothers, Lucien and Alphonse, saying that she could no longer support them as she had done. She said, “You cannot count on me for anything as long as circumstances stay the way they are.” Lucien was touched by her plight and wrote offering her some of his savings. Gabrielle was, of course, still very rich and had no need of them.

She replaced her chauffeur, who had been called up, kept a car ready just in case and consolidated her rooms at the Ritz. She paid for a staircase to be built from her two-room suite up to a small bedroom in the attic, which was very simple, even austere, and contained little more than her bed. For decoration, there was nothing except the beautiful Russian icon given her by Stravinsky, two statues on the mantel and Arthur’s watch, given to her by his sister, Bertha. It still kept perfect time. On the white walls there were no pictures. She said, “Ah no, none of that here. This is a bedroom, not a drawing room.” 4However, even in her drawing room, Gabrielle had only one picture, a painting of wheat by Dalí. It is often said that Dalí gave it to her. He didn’t; Gala Dalí had connived to make Gabrielle buy it. Gabrielle didn’t need painting the way she needed sculpture. Sculpture was, like her couture, a three-dimensional thing, unlike painting, which only plays with three-dimensional space. Indeed, Gabrielle surrounded herself with sculpture of all kinds, from her small herd of large animals, particularly deer and lions, to the classical busts, the large Buddha and the bust of Arthur’s disgraced priest uncle, Thomas Capel. We don’t know whether Gabrielle kept this link with Arthur in the mistaken belief that Thomas was distinguished, or whether she was amused by his dubious reputation.

With the advent of hostilities, many male servants had been called up, so a good number of the better off closed up their establishments, sent their children to the country and, with their jewels and artworks hidden, moved into hotels. Among those living at the Ritz alongside Gabrielle were Schiaparelli and her beloved daughter, Gogo; the fabulously wealthy society figures Lady Mendl and Reginald and Daisy Fellowes; various aristocrats and women whom nothing would budge from Paris; a number of significant politicians; and the actor Sacha Guitry. In the weeks after war was declared, when there was no fighting and the soldiers were all idle, the hostilities seemed unreal. Gas masks remained unused, and people began to relax; there appeared little need for sacrifice, benefit galas proliferated and most theaters and cinemas reopened. That winter of 1939, when social life almost returned to normal, became known as the Phony War.

By February 1940, Daladier was out and a new French premier, Paul Reynaud, had been voted in. Suddenly the Phony War was over: Hitler attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, and the Luftwaffe bombed the airfields of northern France. Jean Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu , with the actors dressed by Gabrielle, had had its premiere just prior to the war and had been booed off the screen. The film with its satirization of the upper classes as capricious and self-indulgent, was banned a few weeks into the war as “unpatriotic.”

German tanks crossed into Holland and Belgium, and armored divisions moved on the Ardennes. Neville Chamberlain resigned on May 10, and Winston Churchill, who promised naught but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” became Britain’s new prime minister. By the end of May, the Allies had suffered a disaster, causing panic in London and Paris as General Rommel swept across northern France toward the English Channel, driving the Allies ahead of him. Whenever a break in the weather allowed it, the Luftwaffe fired on the hundreds of thousands of Allies hoping for rescue on the beaches of Dunkirk. Between the end of May and the first days of June, in the most famous rescue operation of the war, instead of the thirty thousand or so Churchill had believed were all that could be rescued, more than three hundred thousand were ferried to safety in England by the Royal Navy and a huge flotilla of volunteer boats of all shapes and sizes.