Mademoiselle Read online

  Picardie, who received permission to spend a night in Chanel’s suite at the Ritz, has recounted a possible encounter with the ghost of Mademoiselle. According to Picardie, after she retired for the night in Chanel’s bed, all kinds of eerie mischief broke loose: A bulb burst out of a wall sconce; lights in the room began flickering on and off by themselves; doors rattled; voices murmured; and mysterious footsteps echoed in the corridor. Although told in a slightly tongue-in-cheek style, the episode seems designed to convey Chanel’s ongoing unearthly power, her tendency to invade anyone who dares write of her.

  It may be that, faced with the depths of obfuscation Chanel practiced to shield the truth of her life, some biographers simply gave over their voices to Coco to signal that they could not determine an objective truth—that they were yielding to Chanel’s ongoing theatrical monologue about her life. But something more happens in these books; their transmission of Coco’s voice is too absolute, too startling, and happens too often to be the result of a mere stylistic coincidence. On the contrary, this biographical ventriloquism is nothing less than the literary version of Chanel’s stylistic revolution. That is, just as Chanel succeeded in making half the world wish to copy her, she seduced her biographers into channeling her voice. Chanel wills herself (sometimes even posthumously) to be reproduced by and through others. She truly embodies the spirit of mimetic contagion.

  No one writing about Chanel proves completely immune to this seductive force of hers, and I confess I’ve had my moments. Few women raised on fashion magazines could mount the famous mirrored spiral staircase at the House of Chanel without a little inward gasp, without stopping for a moment to compose themselves as I did when climbing those noiseless, plush, beige-carpeted stairs. And thanks to the gracious staff of the Conservatoire Chanel (renamed in 2011 the Direction du Patrimoine Chanel), I have also experienced the thrill of examining Coco’s personal jewelry collection, handling (and yes, trying on) her giant emerald ring (the stone a gift from the Duke of Westminster) and ruby-encrusted bracelet.

  I have donned one of Romy Schneider’s original Chanel jackets, and I have spent time in the famous rue Cambon studio and adjacent apartment. There, I even tried on Mademoiselle’s spectacles and experienced firsthand their vertiginously strong prescription.

  I knew I had to rein myself in, though, the night I interviewed Chanel’s longtime friend Lilou Marquand at her home in Paris. After spending hours talking with me, Madame Marquand began pulling Chanel clothes out of her closets and having me try them on. By evening’s end I was decked out in a sleek cream tweed coat (circa 1958) with Coco’s own white mousseline scarf tied dashingly (by Lilou) around my neck. Stylist that she still is in her late eighties, Madame Marquand insisted on taking photographs of me, and ran around her apartment adjusting the lighting and shouting posing instructions. I had the time of my life. As I left, Madame Marquand insisted that I keep the scarf, which Coco had made for herself out of the hem of one of her own chiffon evening dresses. I floated home through the streets of Paris, letting my sixty-year-old scarf fly out behind me in the night breeze. I had succumbed—not only to the charm of my interview subject and the eternal pleasure of dress-up games—but also to the idea that I was wearing a relic, an object of nearly religious significance, a piece of French civilization as foundational as the Arènes de Lutèce, the stone ruins of a Roman arena hidden in Paris’s fifth arrondissement.

  The next day, realizing how easily ensorcelled I’d been by this bit of Chanel mania, I rededicated myself to my goal here, which is to understand the process that had ensnared me: the mechanics behind this will to copy and to be copied, the will toward emulation, the reverence for long-dead charismatic individuals—in short, the uncanny historical reach of Coco Chanel.

  Given how meticulously Chanel effaced her “true” self, to write another traditional biography of her would be misguided, an exercise in pinning down a ghost. After reading an early version of this manuscript, my editor pronounced Coco “the hole in the center of her own story.” She was right. Chanel seems sometimes to recede, to disappear from the grasp of those who try to explain her. Therein, though, lies the power of her life. In her zeal to fit in, Chanel dissolved and re-created herself a thousand times. But more important, she figured out a way to let other women do that, too. The Chanel persona and design universe beckon us to insert our own narratives into the blank space Coco left for us. That hole where her life should be is actually a seductive invitation. Like the painted pasteboard figures with cutout faces found at carnivals—behind which tourists pose for novelty self-portraits, “disguised” as pioneer wives or Victorian ladies—Chanel asks us to insert ourselves into her persona, to meld our own biography with hers.

  Chanel’s close friend Jean Cocteau understood this phenomenon perfectly. In 1933 he published a cartoon portrait of her for Le Figaro illustré, omitting her face entirely. Coco’s identity communicates itself through the casually regal pose of the body, the distinctively bobbed hair, and, of course, everything she’s wearing: the strands of pearls, the gathered bow of the blouse, the softly draped jacket, the knee-length skirt. Cocteau’s drawing brilliantly hints at Chanel’s implicit invitation to other women to insert their own faces into the blank space, to enter into a dialogue or communion with Coco, without fear of losing themselves completely—without “losing face.” The longevity and appeal of Chanel’s aesthetic depend, in fact, upon just how easy this process is.

  Jean Cocteau’s 1933 faceless portrait of Chanel (illustration credit itr1.1)

  If there’s one thing that interests no one, it’s someone’s life. If I wrote a book about my life, I would begin with today, with tomorrow. Why begin with childhood? Why youth? One should first offer an opinion about the era in which one is living—that’s more logical, newer, and more amusing.

  —COCO CHANEL

  Gabrielle Chanel turned her existence into a glamorous, cinematic soap opera that garnered near-constant chronicling by the press, but she always refused to offer concrete details of her earliest years. Instead, she chose to dispense occasional tidbits of truth, hidden amid the ever-changing fantasies she used to embellish the grim reality of her childhood and, perhaps, to soften for herself the legacy of a youth beset by poverty, tragic loss, and wounding betrayals by those closest to her.

  Ferociously determined till the very end to obscure her true origins, Chanel lived in the present tense. Such insistence upon the “now,” upon the “era in which one is living,” as she put it, may help account for the saving grace of her life: her startling ability to interpret the moment, to create relevant fashion for most of sixty years. Perhaps if Chanel had had a more accepting relationship to her own nineteenth-century rural childhood, she would never have become a standard-bearer for twentieth-century urban womanhood.

  But Chanel’s modernist revolution and its ongoing power have their roots in that long-buried childhood of hers, in the flinty soil of France’s Cévennes region where she was born, in her hardscrabble, peasant ancestors, and in the two major institutions that left their aesthetic, moral, and psychological stamp on her: the Roman Catholic Church and the military.

  Chanel liked to tell people that she was a native Auvergnat, born in the south central region of Auvergne, in France’s Massif Central—a gorgeous, still heavily rural area known for its agriculture, its myriad volcanoes—all extinct for thousands of years—and its highly mineralized water, reputed to hold curative properties. It was a slight untruth. Although Auvergne played a significant role in Chanel’s life, and although her tempestuous nature often evoked comparisons with those many volcanoes, Gabrielle Chanel was actually born far from Auvergne’s rugged beauty, in the northwest Loire Valley town of Saumur. The small lie was telling, though.

  Auvergne was, for generations, home to the Chanel family—the region where her father, Albert Chanel, was born, the region where her grandparents eventually settled. Auvergne was also the place she was conceived. Claiming Auvergne as her birthplace, Chanel tried to
knit herself a bit more tightly into her family history, into the clan that, for the most part, had severed its ties to her when she was a child. She later reciprocated the gesture.

  In 1883, the year of Gabrielle’s birth, the Chanel family’s circumstances were bleak. Judged against even the modest standards of their rural peasant world, Gabrielle’s parents, Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, began their life together at a great disadvantage. At twenty-eight, Albert had little in the way of steady employment. With no trade, no particular skills, and owning almost nothing, he occupied one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder of nineteenth-century France: Like his father before him, he was an itinerant peddler. But unlike his father, Albert did not restrict his travels to the family’s native area of southern France. Bolder, more adventurous, and quite comfortable out on his own, he peddled far and wide, moving north and west, riding a horse-drawn cart filled with small notions and household wares.

  He gained his meager livelihood selling merchandise to the housewives who gathered early in village squares on market days. Albert was well suited to his profession. While he may have been a gambler, a heavy drinker, and barely literate, he was also very charming. “The stands of itinerant peddlers were above all a show,” as historian Eugen Weber has written, and Albert was a natural showman. An easy talker, quick with a joke or a deft compliment, he excelled at the kind of patter that could clinch a sale. It didn’t hurt, either, that he was extremely handsome. Solidly built, with a glowing tan complexion, white teeth, a boyish snub nose, thick shiny black hair, and glittering dark eyes (Gabrielle resembled him strikingly), Albert Chanel knew just how attractive he was to women. By twenty-eight, he had evolved into an accomplished seducer.

  What chance could a nineteen-year-old orphan girl ever have had against the onslaught of Chanel-style sex appeal? In 1881, Jeanne Devolle lived with her twenty-one-year-old brother, Marin, a carpenter who—in the absence of their parents—provided for his sister as well as he could. Vagabonding through the Auvergne town of Courpière, Albert befriended Marin and, as was his wont, sweet-talked the young man into renting him a room in the Devolle household for only a few francs. Once ensconced, it took him no time to set his sights on his host’s pretty and lonely younger sister, a girl who wore her heavy, glossy hair in braids wound around her head. It was an easy conquest. Jeanne fell madly and instantly in love, and in a flash, she was pregnant. Just as quickly, Albert was gone, packing up and fleeing the menace of domestic shackles.

  It was the oldest story in the world, but Albert hadn’t counted on the tenacity of Jeanne’s family. At first, a desperate Jeanne sought refuge with one of her uncles on her mother’s side, Augustin Chardon, but when he discovered her condition he grew enraged and threw her out of the house. Marin intervened to help his sister, and after a time, their uncle took pity on the girl. The family resolved to track down the elusive Albert Chanel and hold him accountable. Saving Jeanne’s honor became a cause célèbre. Soon another uncle got involved, and then even the mayor of Courpière joined in the mission. With the mayor’s help, their little coalition succeeded in locating Albert’s parents, Henri-Adrien and Virginie-Angelina Chanel, who had settled in the nearby town Clermont-Ferrand, close to Vichy. Although still peddlers, Henri and Angelina had entered semiretirement and restricted their selling to the town where they lived.

  The Devolle contingent arrived at the modest home of Monsieur and Madame Chanel and confronted the couple with news of Jeanne’s pregnancy, along with a serious ultimatum: If the Chanels refused to divulge the whereabouts of their son or aid in finding him, Jeanne’s family intended to pursue legal action. Seducing and abandoning a woman counted as a crime, and if convicted, Albert risked deportation to a forced labor camp.

  Such a turn of events could hardly have surprised Albert’s parents; shotgun weddings were a family tradition. Thirty years prior, the young Henri-Adrien—then a laborer on a silkworm farm—had also seduced and impregnated a local teenaged girl, sixteen-year-old Virginie-Angelina—Coco Chanel’s grandmother. Then, too, outraged family members had intervened to coerce the perpetrator into marriage, after which the couple commenced their nomadic life as peddlers—a life made all the more exhausting and precarious by the nineteen children Virginie-Angelina would eventually bear.

  Henri and Virginie-Angelina managed to scare up their wayward son, who had drifted to the eastern Rhône Valley town of Aubenas, where he was living in a room above a local cabaret.

  It made sense that Albert Chanel, who would always aspire toward a finer life, had settled into quarters above a cabaret—it evoked an earlier, far more prosperous time for his family. Albert’s grandfather, Joseph Chanel, had once owned a cabaret in the town of Ponteils, France, and the profession of cabaretier had, for a time, afforded Joseph a level of security and social stature rarely experienced by the Chanel family. “My father always wished for a larger life,” Chanel told Louise de Vilmorin.

  Later Albert would spin increasingly elaborate tales about fictional business ventures, and tell people that he, like his grandfather, owned a cabaret, or that he had bought a vineyard and become a wine merchant. But there was no hiding from reality when his parents and the Devolle-Chardon family confronted him with Jeanne’s pregnancy, now in its ninth month. Under duress, Albert agreed to recognize his child, but obstinately refused to marry Jeanne. Bitter quarrels ensued, but the young man held his ground. He found nothing so distasteful as the prospect of marriage. In the end, Albert wheedled his way into an odd arrangement that bespoke his penchant for dissembling: He would agree to pretend to be married to Jeanne, a charade that wound up involving even his boss, the cabaret owner, who played along and signed his name as a witness on the couple’s faux marriage certificate.

  This pretend marriage perpetuated another family custom, too: Chanel women resigning themselves to whatever commitment they could squeeze out of their shiftless men. Barely twenty years old, penniless, dishonored, and about to be a mother, Jeanne had little choice but to enter into this nonmarriage. Despite everything, she loved Albert with all the passion of an inexperienced young girl. Playing house with him and their new baby seemed like a good-enough consolation prize—far better than losing her handsome boyfriend forever to a far-off labor camp.

  Baby Julia Chanel was born just days after her parents’ play-acted wedding, and not long after that, Albert prepared to take to the road again—alone. Jeanne, however, would have none of it. Knowing she could not survive on her own and equally sure she could not return—disgraced anew—to her uncles in Courpière, she packed up her infant daughter and hit the road right alongside Albert, clinging to him, all pride cast aside. It was to be the tableau that defined the rest of her brief life.

  The little family wended its way up to Saumur in the Loire Valley, where they lived in a single room in a house occupying a dark side street lined with commercial shops. Saumur owed its bustle and hum to the division of the French cavalry garrisoned there. These soldiers cut elegant figures in their fitted, gold-buttoned riding jackets, and were so important to the town that Saumur—unlike any other French city at the time—kept its stores open late into the night during the week to accommodate the schedules of military men who had no wives to take care of errands for them.

  Although Jeanne had managed to travel to Saumur hanging on to Albert’s coattails, she found herself largely alone upon their arrival. Albert had returned to peddling at regional markets and fairs, disappearing for long intervals. Now he was selling women’s undergarments and flannels, which, of course, required many flirtatious encounters with the local ladies. Left to provide for their infant alone, Jeanne found work as a kitchen maid and laundress, scraping stale food off dishes, carrying heavy piles of dirty sheets, bending over tin washtubs, scrubbing. Such work—distasteful and exhausting for anyone—would have proved especially taxing for Jeanne who, in addition to having to tote a three-month-old everywhere with her, was also pregnant once more.

  Early happiness handicaps people. I do not
regret having been profoundly unhappy.

  —COCO CHANEL

  On August 19, 1883, Jeanne went into labor and, with Albert nowhere to be found, managed somehow to make her way to the local Catholic charity hospital, run by the Soeurs de la Providence. With no family or friends present, Jeanne gave birth to her second child, another girl. Hospital employees served as the witnesses on the birth certificate, but since none could read or write, they simply made their mark on the official documents. Two days later, the local vicar baptized the baby in the hospital chapel. Two local Good Samaritans, a man named Moïse Lion and a woman known as the Widow Christenet, were pressed into service as godparents of convenience. Convenience, too, dictated the child’s name: Jeanne was too spent to think, so the nuns stepped in and christened the baby Gabrielle—meaning “God is my might” in Hebrew.

  Only Lion could read or write at all, and with Albert missing and Jeanne unable to leave her hospital bed, no one corrected the small mistake on the baptismal certificate, which announced the birth of Gabrielle Chasnel—a misspelling of the last name that threw a near-permanent obstacle into the path of this baby’s many future biographers.

  Years later, Gabrielle added another alteration to her original name, claiming that her baptismal certificate read “Gabrielle Bonheur [Happiness] Chanel.” The nuns, she said, had gifted her with this middle name as a good-luck charm. “Happiness” appears nowhere on those early documents. Chanel’s invention of this unusual middle name, and her attributing it to the intervention of nuns, suggest an attempt on her part to offer her child self, ex post facto, a shred of the tender concern and warm parental regard so absent in the circumstances of her actual birth. “The child I was remains with me today.… I have satisfied her needs,” Chanel told Louise de Vilmorin.