Mademoiselle Page 11

  It was a truly serendipitous merging of one woman’s talents and personality with the ethos of an exceptional historical moment. Chanel had created a persona that functioned like a looking glass held up to a changed era, showing women a new vision of themselves. As both a couturière and an emerging celebrity personality, Chanel seemed to be asking women to join her on the side of modernity, in the changed world of speed, airplanes, automobiles, and freedoms for women. “The creations of the Maison Chanel are having a tremendous vogue,” declared American Vogue in 1916.

  This modernity, of course, was emerging through the upheaval of war, and thus was shot through with shock, horror, and sorrow. During the four years of World War I, Europe witnessed violence, death, and destruction on a hitherto unknown scale. Nine million servicemen died, along with at least five million civilians, who succumbed to bombings, hunger, and disease. France alone lost 20 percent of its men of military age. And with account taken of disabled or disfigured survivors, only about one-third of all French soldiers made it through the war unharmed.

  We can make sense of no phenomenon occurring in Europe during this time—including the rise of Coco Chanel—without considering it against the backdrop of this brutal, unrelenting massacre of young men. The persona Chanel crafted appealed so strongly and intuitively to women in part because it seemed to contain within it a shadow of those soldiers. (In 1915, she even introduced a new color: “soldier blue.”) As a result of her own long early years of deprivation, sadness, and loss, the emotional affect of Coco’s style had always been somber and restrained. It was, therefore, perfectly attuned to the reigning atmosphere during this terrible war.

  Thin, androgynous, simply dressed in striped naval-uniform-style suits, or schoolboy sports clothes and blazers, the “Chanel woman” conjured the silhouette of the war’s millions of soldiers—the young men dying just out of sight of the general population.

  Coco had more than an abstract relationship to the war and the millions of young men in peril, for it took her beloved Boy away from her. While Chanel spent much of her time in the safety of Deauville, Capel had reported to the front by August 1914. He saw action immediately, taking part in the first major combat involving the English: the Battle of Mons, for which he’d been awarded the “Mons Star.” But Capel was too ambitious to stay in the trenches long. Like Coco, he was benefiting from new opportunities afforded by the war, particularly a friendship he’d forged with a very powerful man: the seventy-four-year-old former prime minister of France, Georges Clemenceau—who would alter entirely the course of Boy’s career. As Coco proudly told Morand, “He won the affection of old Clemenceau, who couldn’t do without him.”

  In 1915, Clemenceau was serving as the president of the French Army Commission, and he met Boy during one of his regular inspection tours of the front. Almost immediately, the two men developed a deep rapport. Clemenceau was a serious Anglophile and fluent in English; he was also a true intellectual, a committed liberal, a lover of art and philosophy, and—in his day—a famous connoisseur of beautiful women. In Boy Capel, he surely saw a younger version of himself.

  By 1915, Clemenceau (known as “the Tiger”) had become an international statesman, devoted to strengthening France’s alliance with Britain, working closely with his friend David Lloyd George, the liberal pacifist soon to become Britain’s prime minister.

  Aware of Capel’s extensive experience in coal shipping, Clemenceau offered him an enticing opportunity: membership on the Franco-British Commission on Coal for the War—a post that would keep Boy safely away from the front. Coco, who had been frantic that he might be injured or killed, could finally relax. At the same time, Capel had ever less time for Coco. His new post effectively turned him into an unofficial diplomat, required to shuttle between London and Paris, and to socialize with the highest military and diplomatic circles. Such glittering circles often included young, aristocratic, and beautiful war widows, whom Capel did not fail to notice.

  Boy’s career rose meteorically. His newfound knowledge of wartime coal shipping needs allowed him to expand his own business dramatically, and he could hardly have chosen a more profitable commodity. Desperately needed for the war effort and in dwindling supply, coal—or “black diamonds” in the curiously inverted metaphor of the day—increased astronomically in value during the war. In response to the demand, Boy increased his fleet of freighters, which were contracted out to the French government for war use. He sold coal from his mines to French factories as well. These war contracts made Capel richer than ever. And his influence only increased when his friend Clemenceau was elected to a second term as prime minister in 1917.

  While his attention was certainly divided, Capel had by no means forgotten Chanel. He visited her when he could and continued to advise her on business matters. He also remained the principal investor in her growing empire. Boy was profiting immensely from the new commercial possibilities brought by war, and he thought Coco should do likewise. He persuaded her that the best way to take advantage of the new markets and clientele opening up to her would be to expand again—this time to another resort location: Biarritz, on France’s southwest coast. As with Deauville, the choice of venue was inspired.

  Chanel with Boy Capel (with Constant Say, seen from behind), on the beach at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, near Biarritz, 1917 (illustration credit 3.7)

  Safely distant from the front and just over the border from neutral Spain, Biarritz remained open for business to wellborn, pleasure-seeking Europeans with cash to spare. And with no war blockades to impede the transport of goods through Spain, Chanel could more easily procure raw materials in Biarritz than in either Paris or Deauville. In the summer of 1915, Capel financed the opening of the third Chanel boutique, housed this time not in a commercial building but in an actual villa they rented out—the grand and ornate Villa Larralde, on Biarritz’s fashionable rue Gardères, which stands at the entrance to the beach and in front of the casino. She hired sixty local workers, and asked her sister Antoinette—who’d moved back up to Paris—to come down to direct the Biarritz salon. Antoinette required coaxing; she enjoyed Paris, even in wartime. Always persuasive, Coco lured her sister south by telling her how many more eligible men she’d find in Biarritz (which was likely true, given the many Spanish visitors to the town, as well as a growing coterie of exiled Russian noblemen). Soon, a steady stream of young female Chanel employees was flowing back and forth between Paris and Biarritz. More experienced girls from the Paris atelier were invited to work at Biarritz, while new girls hired in the south traveled up north for training. When a few of these young women’s parents objected to having their daughters uprooted thus, Chanel smoothly reassured them of the girls’ complete safety. Besides, she told the anxious parents, it was patriotic to help support French business during wartime.

  The store in Biarritz introduced Chanel fashions to customers from the neighboring Spanish cities of Bilbao and Barcelona, which increased sales so successfully that Coco had to open and staff an additional studio in her Paris offices, devoted exclusively to producing clothes for Spain.

  In Biarritz, Chanel perfected her inspired publicity tactic of offering clothes free of charge to beautiful and well-connected women. When these women then wore Coco’s clothes all over town to society parties, they became de facto house models—the most effective walking billboards imaginable. One of Chanel’s first hires for the Biarritz branch, a twenty-one-year-old young woman named Marie-Louise Deray, recalled the studio atmosphere in these early days: “I heard a Parisian lady was opening a boutique in Biarritz, so I went there. Mademoiselle Chanel was not there. There was her sister.… I was hired and I became one of the mainstays of the firm. We immediately enjoyed a great success. Soon I had about sixty workwomen under me. I worked for very famous women who were often friends of Chanel, such as Marthe Davelli.… All of these ladies gave her a lot of publicity.” Slim, long-limbed, with bobbed, wavy dark hair and a wide mouth, Marthe Davelli resembled Coco so strongly that when she wore Ch
anel clothes, she looked like a clone of Coco herself. Davelli was, therefore, one of Coco’s favorite “unofficial mannequins,” since she reminded the public not just of Chanel fashions, but of Chanel’s charismatic personal image as well.

  With branches now in three of France’s choicest venues, Chanel’s business began to acquire the aura of luxury and impeccable taste that would become its hallmarks. The new store was no mere hat shop that sold other items; it was a true fashion house that presented and sold entire collections—seasonal groups of coordinated designs, at couture prices. And money meant, at last, freedom. “I had founded a maison de couture,” recalled Chanel. “It was not the creation of an artist, as it has become fashionable to maintain, or the work of a business woman. It was rather the work of a person who sought only her liberty.”

  In 1915, one of Chanel’s simple jersey dresses sold for about 7,000 francs, or the equivalent of $3,700 in today’s dollars. But it was hardly the materials or labor that made it so costly. Jersey was cheap; most pieces were unlined, and Chanel did not pay her seamstresses very much. It was the association with Coco herself, as she was quickly learning, that imparted value to the clothes. Their worth derived from the persona she was developing and the glamorous life she was leading. “People knew me, they knew who I was, nowhere could I pass unnoticed.… The curiosity to which I was subjected became insatiable and followed me constantly, and one could say it was one of the elements contributing to my success. I was my own advertisement, I always have been.” An October 1916 article in Women’s Wear Daily, with a Biarritz dateline, makes clear how deeply Chanel’s renown wove itself into the allure of her clothes: “It would seem that the whole ‘haute couture’ of Paris is either here or represented for on the Plage the other morning.… Gabrielle Chanel passed attired in the long maroon-colored charmeuse cloak tipped with lapin dyed to match, which was such a success with American buyers at the Chanel opening in August.” The article points out Chanel’s canny use of fur in these early days. Many of her pieces, especially her jersey coats, sported fur collars and trim—even for spring and summer wear. But Coco used only the humblest pelts—usually dyed rabbit and sometimes beaver—in a move that perfectly sums up her aesthetic philosophy. “I had decided to replace rich furs with the most indigent skins.… In that way, I made a fortune for the poor, little tradespeople, the big [fur] retailers never forgave me for this,” she told Morand.

  Nothing telegraphs wealth and stature like a coat with a fur collar. But make that coat out of common jersey, and the fur collar out of cheap and lowly rabbit, and you’ve undermined the implied value of the coat. Now, sell it at an exorbitant price, as if the coat were made of imported silk trimmed with sable, and you’ve arrived at the core of Chanel’s business model, the essence of the style that Paul Poiret dubbed “misérabilisme de luxe,” or “luxurious poverty.”

  The clothes were humble, but conveyed—inversely—an aura of status. “Chanel is master of her art and her art resides in jersey,” declared Vogue. Chanel had found a way to charge duchesses a fortune for the privilege of dressing in materials worn by their servants—the ultimate revenge for this nécessiteuse—this once “needy girl” from the provincial orphanage. Chanel was proud of this accomplishment, and of having communicated her principles to her customer. Coco enjoyed citing an American client who’d marveled at “[Having] spent so much money without it being visible!”

  By the time Coco had opened her third boutique, she employed three hundred workers. She was becoming the style icon of a new generation, a famous and very rich woman. She played her new part to the hilt. “You had to see her arrive at noon, getting out of her Rolls, a chauffeur and a footman. She looked like a queen,” recalled former Biarritz employee Marie-Louise Deray.

  Chanel had craved wealth since her days at Aubazine, when she’d realized that money would grant her freedom. Other than that, though, she knew nothing of finances. When her early sales on rue Cambon had begun producing some revenue, Coco had gone wild, spending far more than she earned. But thanks to Boy, who had guaranteed a line of credit for her with Lloyd’s of London, her checks never bounced. This gave her the illusion of infinitely available funds, and for a time, Boy let her go on believing in this fiction.

  When Capel finally explained the reality of the situation, Coco was horrified. She described the revelation as a turning point in her career: “My heart contracted.… I looked at all the beautiful objects that I’d bought with what I had thought was my own money. And so all of this was paid for by him! I was dependent on him!… I started hating this well-brought-up man who was paying for me. I threw my purse in his face and fled the apartment.” Coco calmed down, but the next day she went to work armed with new purpose, announcing to her staff, “I am not here to have fun.… I am here to make a fortune. From now on, no one spends a centime without my permission.”

  “That day was the end of my unconscious youth,” she recalled.

  Chanel would never mismanage money again, and by 1916 she’d paid Boy back every penny he had advanced her. She even bought outright the Villa Larralde for the princely sum of 300,000 francs. (The same year, Chanel’s last remaining ties to her peasant forebears were severed when both of her grandparents, Henri and Virginie-Angelina Chanel, died within months of each other. Aunt Adrienne traveled to Vichy to arrange their funerals.)

  Chanel told Morand that Boy was shocked when she paid him back in full: “I thought I was buying you a toy, and discovered I was buying you your liberty,” she reported him saying. While Boy had early on stopped seeing Coco’s business as a toy, he was very serious when he spoke to her of “liberty.” To Capel, helping Chanel found her empire was more than a matter of good business; it was a matter of conscience, for Boy Capel was passionately committed to equal opportunity for women. In an essay entitled “Necessary Emancipations,” Boy wrote movingly of the obstacles impeding women: “For centuries, [women] have been considered … as inferior creatures.… The time has come to enfranchise them.”

  Such sentiments emerged naturally from Capel’s deep interest in justice of all kinds. He mistrusted easy categorizations, decrying all labels—of sex, nation, class, religion, or race—that set up hierarchies among people. He held an almost mystical belief in an overarching connection among all peoples, which he called “the human family.” Beyond the spiritual appeal of such notions, Capel saw the potential for real-world, political application—the basis of a progressive, internationalist philosophy of peace. Such a philosophy formed the core of the two books he authored: Reflections on Victory and a Project for the Federation of Governments (1917) and De Quoi demain sera-t-il fait? (What Will Tomorrow Be Made Of?), written apparently in French and published posthumously in 1939.

  Reflections on Victory is astonishing in its prescience. With the outcome of the war still in the balance, Capel correctly guessed that Germany would suffer an ignominious loss that would incite it to terrible future violence: “Germany will take her revenge for what we propose to do to her.” Capel also foresaw the coming power imbalance between the two nations: “In ten years’ time … the German army will be three times as large as the French army.… How … can we expect to destroy or even dominate a strong, resolute, disciplined and organized mother-race like the Teuton race?”

  To forestall the cycle of enmity, Capel proposed a solution: a collectivity, or “federation,” of European states, in which patriotism and individual national interests cede to the greater good of all: “We [must] destroy the old fetish balance of power based on militarism, and firmly install federation in Europe.… The choice must be made between extinction and federation.… Militarism is the creed of those human reptiles whose business is war … who [act] in the name of country or national power.”

  For Capel, the key to building this “federation” lay in overthrowing Europe’s “gerontocracy”—the old men who send young men off to die in war. Capel believed that handing the reins over to the idealistic younger generation would secure lasting peace. The T
imes Literary Supplement praised the book, while noting that some of its plans lacked practical details. Soon after Reflections on Victory, Boy nearly completed a companion volume (published only decades later), expanding on his vision for Europe’s future. This sequel, What Will Tomorrow Be Made Of?, outlines Capel’s notion of a democratic “City of the Future,” where social class divisions fade away, and disenfranchised groups—especially women—enjoy equal freedoms. Capel devotes a section to the inequities of society marriages, and the mercenary practice of dowries.

  Once Georges Clemenceau moved Boy Capel out of the trenches and into a diplomatic post, Capel was free to act on his many political passions. Until now, little has been known about Boy’s wartime work, but a cache of letters uncovered in London’s Imperial War Museum reveals a great deal about Capel’s political role. While serving on the coal commission, Capel seems to have increasingly assumed additional—unofficial—responsibilities as a key liaison between the British and French governments during the war, working directly under Sir Henry Hughes Wilson, British director of military operations during the war (and, as of 1918, chief of the imperial general staff). Correspondence between Wilson and Capel shows another side of Boy, who displays not only his genuine desire for peace and international understanding, but also his high-reaching ambitions and impatience with his lack of proper diplomatic rank and title.

  The letters reveal Capel’s interest in drawing Holland into the war (a plan that others also supported, but which ultimately failed), along with his idea of finding some Arab support to counter the recent entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers. Cocky and conspiratorial, Capel’s tone betrays a still-young man eager to prove himself a knowing insider: