Mademoiselle Read online

  Over time, Lagerfeld has made plain how little he cares to worship at the altar of Coco: “Respect is not creation. Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore,” he has declared. This iconoclasm has electrified and rejuvenated the house. Lagerfeld has lengthened jackets or nipped them at the waist, shortened skirts (sometimes to micromini dimensions), and incorporated a range of materials and cultural cues that would never have passed muster with Mademoiselle: leather, denim, hip-hop bling, sky-high heels, punk graffiti, surfer looks, S&M bondage details. “He has antennae everywhere,” as Marika Genty, of the Direction du Patrimoine Chanel, puts it. Lagerfeld has sent models sashaying down the catwalk braless under see-through body stockings. He has tampered with the sacrosanct Chanel armhole, producing tighter, curvier, yet far less forgiving jackets. And he has even designed corsets to be worn visibly—as fashion, not undergarments—in flagrant defiance of Chanel’s historic injunction against them.

  Jettisoning Chanel’s trademark understatement, Lagerfeld has produced—for more than thirty years now—consistently inventive, sensual, and lavishly beautiful clothes for the Maison, while at times designing for other labels as well. In his version of Chanel, women don’t fit in, they stand out. Only newness interests him, and he claims to discard every garment and sketch after finishing a collection.

  But despite his passion for the ephemeral, Lagerfeld never neglects the enduring features that make Chanel Chanel. He “speaks,” that is, “fluent Chanel”—only in his own, distinct accent. Motifs such as quilted leather, imitation jewels, soft tweeds, chain link belts, gold-buttoned jackets, white collars and cuffs, and camellia flowers all float through his collections, looking familiar yet altered—as if plundered somehow from Coco’s morphine-induced dreams: A suit jacket might be studded with faux pearls as big as Ping-Pong balls, pastel tweed fashioned into a cropped, boat-necked mini-blazer, or decorative fringe “buzz cut” so that its strands flutter outward from a dress instead of hanging straight down.

  Accessories inspire special exuberance in Lagerfeld: A quilted leather shoulder bag might be blown up to the size of a hula hoop.

  He has even designed a surfboard to resemble a giant Chanel sling-back—in beige with a black “toecap,” and stamped with the double-C logo. In a surreal photo shoot, models in classic Chanel skirt suits, pearls, and straw boaters toted the surfboards across a sandy beach.

  Lagerfeld refines his own persona with similar self-aware wit. “I am my own marionette,” he acknowledges. He dusts his trademark ponytail with dry shampoo to give it the look of a powdered wig, carries a fan, keeps his eyes hidden day and night behind massive black sunglasses (“I’m not a stripper!” he retorts when asked to remove them), and sticks usually to a uniform of bespoke white shirt with a high collar, tight black jeans and jacket, black tie with jeweled pin, fingerless black leather mitts, and heavy silver rings on every finger. The ensemble makes a postmodern pastiche of Goth, punk, the Prussian military (his press nickname is “the Kaiser”), the court of Louis XVI, and—in its black-and-white palette, modernist lines, and abundant jewelry—Coco Chanel. Lagerfeld also resembles Coco in his choice to keep two adjacent homes in Paris—one where he sleeps and sketches, the other for everything else. “They are very alike, these two people,” says the director of international public relations for Chanel. Coco is also present in Lagerfeld’s cultivation of a faintly royal bearing (he has staged runway shows at the Palace of Versailles), although he evokes nobility with a cool and knowing wink, never with aspirational longing. Via his nationality, Lagerfeld even manages to raise the specter of Chanel’s relationship with Germany, only to exorcise it with his obvious preference for a safely pre-Nazi era.

  Karl Lagerfeld and his models in Saint-Tropez, for the runway show of Chanel Cruise Collection, May 2010 (illustration credit bm1.1)

  Too self-ironic—and too male—to offer himself seriously as a role model for women, Lagerfeld relies on a different technique: By at once “channeling” Chanel, and caricaturing her, he keeps the myth alive while opening it up for others to share. Lagerfeld lends the Chanel persona to a changing cast of celebrities. With the Cambon studio, Chanel’s suite at the Ritz, and other classic “Coco” locations as backdrops, he casts popular singers or actresses as latter-day Cocos, dressing them in Chanel couture, and having them reimagine famous portraits of Coco (pop icon Rihanna re-created a classic Horst photograph of Coco), or act out her life story. Actresses Keira Knightley and Geraldine Chaplin have both played Chanel in short films by Lagerfeld.

  Lagerfeld has also infused the Chanel brand with the gravitas of high art. On his watch, exhibitions showcasing Chanel’s life and work have been organized in major museums worldwide. Most dramatically, in a 2008 publicity campaign, the “Mobile Art Chanel Pavilion”—star architect Zaha Hadid’s 7,500-square-foot portable gallery—toured the globe. Resembling a Chanel handbag transformed into a spaceship, and built at a reputed cost of 1 million euros, the pavilion traveled to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York—where it was erected on prime real estate in Central Park, at Sixty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Once inside, visitors could view contemporary artworks purportedly inspired by Chanel’s 2.55 quilted handbag, while marveling at Hadid’s undulating, sci-fi structure.

  However outré Lagerfeld, his couture, or recent Chanel publicity might seem, the generating force of this massive enterprise remains Coco Chanel herself. It’s her classic style—the ribbon-trimmed tweeds, striped pullovers, long ropes of pearls, and two-toned shoes—that has never stopped being reproduced, her double-C logo that renders nearly any product a coveted status symbol. The ongoing love of these elements has helped Chanel grow to its current, vast proportions.

  During the past three decades, the Chanel corporation (still held by the fiercely private Wertheimers) has expanded into nearly every country outside of Africa, and generates sales upwards of $11 billion annually. Yet Chanel employees at every level speak of their careers as a devotional, not a commercial, practice—as participation in an exclusive inner sanctum. “You’ve got to feel it in your gut,” said a woman who helps manage the Chanel archives. “Chanel is a religion,” says one executive. “You are inside it or you are not. It’s a spirit.”

  Another high-level staff member, who deals with couture clients from the developing world, implicitly compared her work to a missionary’s: “There are two kinds of clients: [those] who must be taught, and the cultivated, who already know.” Employees, too, must be taught, and the Maison Chanel maintains training institutes in many world capitals, where new recruits learn not only about Chanel products, fashion, and business practices, but also about Coco Chanel, the woman. Studying the life of the founder (or an approved version of it) has proved an indispensable prerequisite for those who disseminate her image globally.

  When I received permission to interview one of the most senior members of the Chanel team in Paris, I expected a very prepossessing figure. Not only was this woman a powerful executive, she was a celebrity, a jet-setting socialite, constantly photographed in the international press. She was also an aristocrat, bearing the instantly recognizable name of one of France’s oldest, most historic families. Her presence continues Mademoiselle’s practice of hiring members of the nobility.

  An assistant escorted me into the office, where the lady—extremely slim and in her midsixties—was seated at her desk. She wore a cashmere sweater embossed with the double-C insignia, a Chanel tweed skirt, and Chanel pumps. Her dark hair was cut stylishly short. She looked up to greet me, and as she did so, she picked up an atomizer bottle of Chanel No. 5 sitting on her desk and quickly sprayed several circles of it around her head, creating for a moment a visible cloud. That mist soon evaporated, but its effect was long-lasting. As we talked that day, the scent never faded. Mademoiselle’s aura stayed with us.

  Chanel on her famous staircase, January 1, 1953 (illustration credit bm1.2)

  I have tried to be both invisible and present.

  —COCO
CHANEL

  Chanel in her early twenties. Coll. Taponier/Photo 12/The Image Works

  The glamorous casino at Vichy

  “Water girls” at La Grande Grille, the Vichy thermal spa where Chanel may have worked

  Chanel golfing, in her own sportswear, 1910. Mary Evans/Epic/PVDE

  Three flowing jersey ensembles by Chanel, as featured in the magazine Les Elégances Parisiennes, 1917. Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Epic

  Misia Sert, renowned patron of the arts and Chanel’s closest female friend, in a 1907 portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Roger-Viollet/The Image Works

  Drawing of Chanel beaded gown with fringe, designed as a stage costume for Cecile Sorel, 1918. Condé Nast

  Chanel beaded evening dresses from the 1920s. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Wesson Seyburn

  Model in black Chanel evening dress, 1928. Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library/Epic/Tallendier

  Chanel wearing her signature pearls backward, the perfect symbol of social inversion, 1936. Boris Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet/The Image Works

  Paul Iribe’s illustration of fashions by Paul Poiret, with furniture based on pieces designed by Iribe. The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Iribe’s vision of French arts menaced by foreign, racially “other” modernist influences, 1932

  Coco as Marianne, bloodied and tormented, as drawn by Iribe in Le Témoin

  Iribe’s patriotic view of Paris’s luxury shopping district: the rue de la Paix, looking toward the Colonne Vendôme, as France’s “display case”

  For his Fall 2011 runway show in the Grand Palais, Karl Lagerfeld re-created the Place Vendôme, replacing Napoléon with a metallic statue of Chanel atop a replica of the Colonne Vendôme. Photo by Michael Dufour/Wirelmage

  Chanel’s “patriotic” dress in the colors of the French flag, 1939. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York/© The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of New York

  A surrealism-inspired evening coat created by Chanel’s archrival Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, one of Chanel’s closest friends, 1937. Such whimsical pieces, so different from Chanel’s in style, won great acclaim in late 1930s Paris. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA/Gift of Mme Elsa Schiaparelli/The Bridgeman Art Library

  Poster, “Neues Volk 1938” [New People 1938], for the calendar of the Racial Policy Office of the Nazi Party, 1938, depicting the idealized Nazi family. The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection/The Wolfsonian-Florida International University

  Chanel at her dressing table, in her Ritz apartment, 1938. Photo by Jean Moral, courtesy of Brigitte Moral

  Chanel’s personal jewelry case

  A full-skirted, fur-trimmed Chanel evening dress, 1958. Boris Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet/The Image Works

  Chanel leaving her rue Cambon offices, 1938. Photo by Jean Moral, courtesy of Brigitte Moral

  Chanel in her apartment surrounded by her models, 1959. Willy Rizzo Studios

  Chanel in the Tuileries, 1957. Willy Rizzo Studios

  Chanel at work, surrounded by fabric, 1959. Willy Rizzo Studios

  Jacques Chazot (right) congratulating Chanel after a runway show, 1958. STF/AFP/Getty Images

  First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in a Chanel-designed suit: Dallas, November 22, 1963. Photo by Art Rickerby/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

  Chanel’s influence continues to surface in unexpected ways: above, a contemporary child appears costumed as Chanel for an art photograph; below, the French graffiti artist Zevs has repurposed the Chanel logo for an installation. Courtesy of Jaime C. Moore (above); Courtesy of Zevs (below)

  For Daniel

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The human, interpersonal aspect of research is, for me, the most gratifying. I treasure the new acquaintances I’ve made over these years, and look back with delight at the many interviews and conversations I’ve shared with them. I can but hope that the book does justice to all that has been given me during its creation.

  France: I owe a debt of gratitude to the outstanding staff of the Direction du patrimoine de la Maison Chanel in Paris, especially Marika Genty and Cécile Goddet-Dirles. Thanks also to Odile Babin, Valérie Duport, and Marie-Louise de Clermont-Tonnerre for enlightening me about Chanel fashion, the history of the brand, its business practices, and its unique culture.

  I am grateful to the staffs of the Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris (Musée Galliera); the Musée de la mode et du textile; the Musée des Arts décoratifs; the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet; the Bibliothèque Forney; the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris; the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; the Comité Jean Cocteau, especially Claudine Boulouque; the Archives de la préfecture de police de Paris, especially Emanuelle Broux-Foucaud; and the archives de la Société historique de Compiègne. Special thanks must go as well to Caroline Berton of Condé Nast, France.

  For granting me personal interviews and sharing documents, photographs, and stories, I offer heartfelt thanks to Antoine Balsan; Philippe Carcasonne; Betty Catroux; (the late) Viviane Dreyfus Forrester and her sister, Dowager Lady Christiane Dreyfus Swaythling; Philippe Gontier; James Palmer of Mondex Corporation; Danniel Rangel; Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie; Lilou Marquand; Brigitte Moral Planté; and (the late) Willy Rizzo and his wife, Dominique Rizzo. For permitting me access to their mother’s manuscripts, I thank Philippe de Vilmorin and Claire de Fleurieu. Thank you to French graffiti and installation artist Zevs, for granting me the rights to reproduce his work, and to Isée St. John Knowles of the Société Baudelaire.

  For leading me to new information about Arthur “Boy” Capel, I thank Martine Alison, Daniel Hainaut, and Joseph Quinette of the Société de l’histoire de Fréjus.

  Switzerland: I am grateful to Milo Keller and to Emile Barret of the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne for help obtaining photographs.

  Italy: I thank Countess Isabella Vacani von Fechtmann of Genoa for sharing her recollections of Chanel and for proposing intriguing new interpretations of certain events.

  England: I am grateful to the staffs of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum of London, and the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University. For his outstanding research help, I thank Marc Offord of Cambridge University. A special thank-you is due as well to Professor William Philpott of King’s College, London.

  Spain: Director Josep Miquel Garcia welcomed me most graciously to the Fundació Apel-les Fenosa in El Vendrell, Spain, shared his extensive archives with me, and even allowed me to view all the objects in an exhibition that had already been deinstalled.

  United States: I thank Barbara Cirkva of Chanel, New York, for helping me gain access to the Chanel Archives in Paris. I am especially indebted to Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

  I am grateful to the staff of the Museum of the City of New York, particularly Phyllis Magidson, William DiGregorio, and Nilda Rivera, and to the staff at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the New York Public Library for Performing Arts. Thanks also to Leigh Montville of Condé Nast, New York.

  The staff of Harvard’s Houghton Library unlocked the diaries of Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov for me, and Philipp Penka, of Harvard’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, translated those diaries with great subtlety and care.

  Thanks go as well to the staff of the glorious Getty Research Institute, where I began this project; Rebecca Cape of the Lilly Library at Indiana University; Russell Martin of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University; the staff of the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, especially Caroline Waddell; the Special Collections Department of Northwestern University; the Arizona Costume Institute; and the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. Special thanks also to Uki Goñi for providing rare and important new materials, and to photographer Jaime Moore, who granted me rights to her work.

  For sharing information and p
hotographs of their historic family, I am grateful to their Serene Highnesses, Princess Anna Romanoff Ilyinsky and Prince Michael Romanoff Ilyinsky.

  To the many colleagues and friends who supported and encouraged me during this process, I want to express more than gratitude; I want to convey how lucky I feel to enjoy their company and innumerable talents. Thank you to April Alliston, Leirion Gaylor Baird, Kenneth Bleeth, Leslie Camhi, Joy Castro, Mary Ann Caws, Anne Duncan (who helped with Greek translations), Caroline Evans of London’s Central Saint Martins, Nancy Friedemann, Charley Friedman, Jane Garrity, Susan Gubar, Matthew Gumpert, John Habich, Richard Halpern, Glenn Kurtz (who read and commented thoughtfully on an early draft), Amelia Montes, Eugenia Paulicelli, Julie Stone Peters, Susan Poser (who also read and commented on every chapter), Nana Smith, and Willard Spiegelman.

  Thanks to Maurice Samuels and Alice Kaplan for providing me an opportunity to present a part of this book at Yale University. I am, as ever, grateful to Andrew Solomon for his support, thoughtful critique, and amazing generosity.

  Jaime Wolf was unstinting in lending me his legal expertise, as was his colleague Matthew Tynan.