Mademoiselle Page 7

  Chanel watched and learned. She found these women irresistible, if intimidating. But she had none of the right tools to emulate them—no fine wardrobe, no jewels, not even any curves to pour into a tightly laced gown. Boyish, slim hipped, and flat chested, Coco knew that copying Emilienne and the others would not suit her. Besides, although he was generous in many ways, Balsan was not given to lavish spending, and offered her no jewels or gowns. But débrouillarde as ever, Coco found her way.

  Since most daylight hours at Royallieu were filled with equestrian activities, Coco focused on dressing for these. Aware that she looked especially fetching in schoolgirl or tomboyish styles, she created variations on these, often cadging items from Etienne’s closets. Photographs from this period show Chanel in open-collared men’s shirts worn with little schoolgirl ties, oversize tweed coats borrowed from Etienne, and simple straw boater hats, like the ones the men were wearing. These little boaters looked effortlessly chic next to the heavy and ornate concoctions typical of the period (“enormous pies balanced on heads, monuments of feathers, fruits, egrets,” as Chanel described them).

  And while Etienne did not offer to buy her fine clothes, he did arrange for her to visit a modest tailor in town, on the rue Croix-Saint-Ouen—where liveried servants and local groomsmen bought their clothes. Decades later, Chanel recalled the tailor’s shock when she walked into his shop, which smelled, she said, like horses. No young ladies had ever sought his services before. But Coco knew what she wanted—a boy’s riding costume with jodhpurs, like the ones worn by the English grooms she’d met at Royallieu. The tailor complied, and at such a reasonable price that Coco had enough left over for new riding boots.

  The outfit was not just for show. Coco had figured out that success at Royallieu meant excelling at horsemanship. With the steely determination that would never desert her, Chanel took up riding. The result exceeded everyone’s expectations. Etienne taught her to ride—and not sidesaddle, the way of delicate ladies in petticoats, but astride, like a serious male equestrian. Years later, in the salty language of stable workers, Coco confided the secret she’d discovered to maintaining a proper seat while riding: “You have to imagine that you have a precious pair of balls [here she made a cupping gesture] and that it would be out of the question to rest your weight upon them.” For the rest of her life, Coco would benefit from this ability to think—and act—like a man.

  Although Chanel rarely discussed her days at Royallieu, her stint there was extensive—probably close to six years. Aside from the parties, the riding, and the field trips to racetracks, château life for this cohort was fairly idle. Coco enjoyed walking the beautiful grounds and communing with the animals kept at the estate, especially one mischievous monkey that Balsan had adopted. The others relied upon social amusements, holding costume parties or playing practical jokes on one another. Balsan famously invited a bishop to dinner one night, exhorting his friends to dress modestly and behave correctly—no profanity, no sacrilege. The bishop arrived in full church regalia, but soon fell far short of all social or religious protocol. Drinking heavily, he proceeded to attack one of the housemaids and then began lewdly propositioning some of the men present. Balsan’s dinner guests were horror-struck—until Etienne revealed that the bishop was actually an actor from Paris, and a friend of Marthe Davelli’s. Etienne and Marthe had cooked up the entire scheme as a lark. Such were the high jinks Coco encountered at Royallieu.

  Coco was shocked by this decadent atmosphere. Speaking to Louise de Vilmorin, she described life with Balsan’s friends as a “vast game for the wealthy.… They were rich: they knew no hindrances. Money granted them freedom.” Coco had no money of her own yet, but she did have leisure—which felt awfully good to her. She gained a reputation for lounging in bed for long hours every day, drinking café au lait and reading her cheap novels, sometimes not rising till past noon. And while Balsan and his friends were all young and relatively freethinking, certain social hierarchies still prevailed. Coco did not enjoy the same status as some of the other houseguests, and when more proper visitors arrived—say a married society lady—gamine orphans were invited to take their meals apart, with château employees. Even at the racetrack, whenever titled wives or parents were around, Balsan carefully kept Coco on the sidelines, with the bookies and the prostitutes. She was not permitted to enter the winner’s circle. Such treatment surely rankled, but Coco never complained—either at the time or afterward. She expressed only gratitude for Balsan, with whom she remained friendly throughout her life.

  But the languid habits of rich courtesans did not entirely suit Coco, and neither did the second-tier social status she had yet to shake. Chanel would never be mistress of Royallieu, and she knew it. Balsan was fond of her, and they surely slept together, but Coco and Etienne were not in love. They were more like erotic comrades.

  The comforts of Royallieu, moreover, did nothing to attenuate Coco’s yearning for independence. She was all too aware of the dangers of relying on men, and still burned to be special in some way. No longer hoping for a stage career, Coco sought another way to turn the spotlight on herself: “I wanted to escape, and to become the center of a universe of my own creation, instead of remaining on the margins or even becoming part of other people’s universe.”

  Coco’s escape path gradually came into focus. It lay, she discovered, precisely in her difference, in the unique style she was creating for herself out of necessity. The boyishly simple style Coco sported looked irresistibly fresh and modern next to the floor-sweeping skirts, petticoats, and corseted bodices of her colleagues at Royallieu. In following her own contrarian instincts and tricking herself out like one of Balsan’s stable grooms, Coco set off her first fashion craze. Her little riding costume, man’s overcoat, and cunning straw hats seemed to render obsolete all the heavy finery of Royallieu’s feminine set. Chanel could see this herself: “The era of extravagant dressing of which I had dreamed, of dresses worn by heroines, was no more.… I knew that rich materials didn’t suit me.… I stuck with my … cheap clothes.” Soon, the fabled beauties of Royallieu were trooping up the stairs to Coco’s third-floor bedroom to try on her hats, jockeying for position in front of the mirror to admire themselves in her creations.

  Aware that Coco was restless, Etienne encouraged her to try her hand at millinery. To him, making hats for her friends seemed like the perfect distraction for his bored pet. Chanel jumped at the chance. She set about buying dozens of basic straw hats (at Galeries Lafayette, during trips to Paris) and decorating them in her room, much as she once had while visiting her aunt Louise back in Varennes. The hats were a sensation, not least because they fit a woman’s head. Coco had always worn her own hats low on her forehead, to keep them on in the wind, she said. But most ladies’ hats at this time simply balanced atop their heads like plates, held on with pins and veils—a custom Chanel found absurd and impractical.

  With the likes of Emilienne d’Alençon wearing Coco’s creations, it was only a matter of time before other high-profile ladies started coveting her hats as well. At first, when asked where they’d procured their charming new headwear, Coco’s friends would fib, vaguely citing Paris shops. Soon enough, however, Chanel’s name was mentioned. Suddenly, she had a little business on her hands. Or rather, she almost did: A milliner can’t operate out of a château bedroom. Chanel wanted her own store and approached the only benefactor she knew for help, Etienne.

  This was more than Balsan had bargained for. It was one thing to encourage Coco’s little hat hobby, quite another to support her in a serious business venture. Besides, women like Coco didn’t work or own businesses. Balsan was more than skeptical, but did offer the use of his Paris garconnière, or bachelor pad, which he still kept at 160, boulevard Malesherbes, in the eighth arrondissement. He’d housed several mistresses there over the years, but never one with a hat shop. Coco began to travel back and forth from Royallieu to Paris.

  It has often been speculated that, on one occasion in 1909, Coco sought speci
al medical attention in Paris—of the kind offered by underground professionals known euphemistically as faiseuses d’ange, or “angel makers.” Friends whispered for years that she had fallen prey to the fate of so many women in her situation—pregnancy. If Coco underwent an abortion, she did not speak of it, but biographer Marcel Haedrich, who interviewed many of Chanel’s acquaintances, gives credence to this story. A backstreet abortion, furthermore, would explain Coco’s lifelong inability to bear children.

  From that point in 1909 onward, while Chanel continued to pursue her new career and her association with Balsan, she seemed to have changed—perhaps as a result of the abortion. She grew tired of the frivolities at Royallieu. Coco needed a more serious life and a more serious love.

  The boy was handsome, dark, seductive. He was more than handsome, he was magnificent. I admired his nonchalance, his green eyes. He rode proud horses, and powerful ones. I fell in love with him. I had never loved [Etienne Balsan]. Between this Englishman and me, not one word was exchanged.… He was the only man I ever loved. He died. I have never forgotten him. He was the great chance of my life.… He was for me my father, my brother, my whole family.

  —COCO CHANEL

  Chanel’s account of her first meeting with Arthur Edward “Boy” Capel might have been lifted from one of the sentimental novels she loved. Often, in recalling the details, she condensed months of her acquaintance with Capel into a moment of wordless mutual understanding, a coup de foudre when the pair locked eyes while riding horses in the southwestern French town of Pau. (Paul Morand saw the story’s literary potential and fictionalized it in his novel Lewis and Irene.) According to Chanel, when Boy informed her that he would be leaving on the morning train for Paris, she dropped everything to follow him, showing up at the train station the next day, without so much as a suitcase. Seeing her there, an unsurprised Boy simply “opened his arms” to her, thus beginning their decadelong romance.

  Arthur “Boy” Capel (illustration credit 3.1)

  While Coco doubtless embellished the details (and definitely brought a suitcase), the import of the story lies in the certainty it conveys. She met Boy when she was twenty-five, and his would always remain that pair of open arms she fell into effortlessly, the one perfect fit. Coco was right; Boy was the “chance of her life”—a potent catalyst setting off an astonishing reaction.

  It is possible that the two did meet on horseback. It is just as likely that they met at Royallieu in 1908 when Boy, who knew Balsan through aristocratic polo circles, began frequenting the estate. And although the course of their early interactions may not have run as swiftly or as novelistically as Chanel would have it, theirs was a genuine and long-lasting love, by far the most important relationship Chanel ever had. “He gave birth to me,” Chanel said of Capel and, metaphorically, it was so. Coco became “Coco” via Boy’s love and tutelage. He awoke her mind, thrilled her body, taught her to think, inspired her business acumen, and introduced her to art, literature, politics, music, and philosophy.

  Balsan had offered amiable companionship and some limited financial support—he had opened an important new window for Coco. But Boy flung open the doors. He could “see” Coco, looking beyond her façade of sharp-witted little seamstress to the hungry, brilliant, yearning spirit beneath. Boy and Coco’s love affair lent shape not only to the rest of Chanel’s personal life, but to the course of her global empire, engendering much of the liberating quality we still see in the Chanel aesthetic. Capel set Coco free and, in doing so, he set off a fashion juggernaut for women—a new approach to dress that contained within it an emancipatory impulse.

  It was a philosophy inextricable from Boy’s own highly considered and erudite views of international politics, to which Coco was exposed by virtue of his connections and influence. In fact, we can clearly see the early relationship between Chanel’s fashion revolution and European politics in the course of her relationship with Capel. Coco Chanel owes her ongoing role as a revered figure of female freedom to the transformation she underwent—personally and professionally—from 1908 to 1918, the “Boy” years. New discoveries about Capel’s mysterious life and work, moreover, help explain the unique bond that united this couple.

  Deeply scholarly and intellectually voracious, Boy lived for ideas. He pondered questions of social justice, soul and spirit, economics, and foreign policy, and wrote two intriguing books on these subjects (the second published posthumously). He was also a true cultural hybrid, perfectly bilingual in the languages of his French mother and English father. Although educated in England, he was a longtime resident of Paris, and—unlike most of the crowd at Royallieu—completely at home amid the pulsing, vital culture of the capital.

  But Capel distinguished himself most sharply from Balsan and company by virtue of his understanding of a concept unfamiliar at Royallieu: work. Balsan’s male friends were either titled aristocrats or members of the long-standing haute bourgeoisie. Such men did not hold jobs or have professions. But the Capel family’s fortune was new, barely one generation old. Boy’s father, Arthur Joseph Capel, had been born to modest circumstances—his mother before him (Boy’s grandmother) had been a lodging housekeeper from Ireland. Boy’s father had made his fortune—in coal shipping and ocean liners—only within the years since his marriage to Boy’s mother, Berthe Lorin Capel. Watching his father develop and nurture the family business, Boy acquired an entrepreneurial spirit. By 1901, Arthur Joseph Capel was retired and living comfortably on his investments. Boy, though, not content to live on family money, worked for his living and, in time, greatly increased the family’s holdings and wealth.

  While Coco fashioned her hats in Etienne’s Paris bachelor pad at 160, boulevard Malesherbes, Boy stayed nearby in his own Paris apartment, just steps away at 138, boulevard Malesherbes. (It is not clear if Capel had chosen this apartment for its proximity to his friend Balsan, or to be nearer Coco.) He admired Coco and listened to her dreams. He began sending his glamorous lady friends over to Coco’s studio to see her hats. Coco’s charming designs and winning manner turned them all into devoted new customers.

  Like the peddlers from whom she was descended, Chanel turned out to be a natural saleswoman. Soon her business had expanded to the point where she needed help. Her younger sister, Antoinette, was now living in Vichy and trying, just as Coco had, with little success, to become a cabaret singer. Aunt Adrienne (subsidized by her lover, Maurice de Nexon) had been helping Antoinette a bit financially, but now a far better prospect glimmered. Coco summoned her sister to Paris to help out on boulevard Malesherbes.

  In the archives of the Maison Chanel, the first entry in the earliest available business logbook bears the date January 1, 1910. Carefully handwritten there, in fountain pen, is the name “Mademoiselle Chanel, Antoinette,” described as a vendeuse (saleswoman), working on commission—earning 10 percent on all paid sales. Antoinette did not have Coco’s talent or intense intelligence, but she had inherited other Chanel family virtues. She was indisputably pretty and engaging, and—most important—a hard and dedicated worker. She jumped at the chance to move to the capital.

  Antoinette settled into the Malesherbes apartment. By day, she welcomed clients and helped them select hats, and at night, she slept in the back bedroom—which Coco had been using. This inconvenienced no one, though, since Boy and Coco were spending ever more time together, and on nights when she stayed in town, Chanel could be found down the street at Capel’s apartment.

  Etienne was not unaware of the situation. Technically, Chanel still “belonged” to him; she was his irrégulière. But as a man of the world, Balsan accepted Coco and Boy’s romance, seeing it as little more than a harmless dalliance. He had more than enough young beauties to amuse him at Compiègne. And although skeptical of Chanel’s business venture, he continued to provide her with some support. As Coco’s business grew, she had begun selling clothes alongside her hats—simple jersey separates with a tomboyish feel—and so, in addition to lending her his Malesherbes apartment, E
tienne arranged for Chanel to learn from a fashion expert, hiring accomplished Parisian seamstress Lucienne Rabaté.

  Despite her youth—she was three years Coco’s junior—Rabaté had already enjoyed a long career in couture. Unlike Chanel, she had undergone formal training in fashion and had risen in the ranks of the industry at the prestigious house of Chez Lewis, moving from apprentice up through such stages as garnisseuse (working with accessories, or “garnishes”) and aide-seconde, before finally achieving the rank of petite première, charged with greeting clients and supervising their fittings. For an untutored novice like Coco, Lucienne was a precious asset. She brought with her not only her vast experience in both sewing and business management, but also two of her very capable assistants and many of her high-society and celebrity customers from Chez Lewis.

  But life in the makeshift studio on boulevard Malesherbes bore little resemblance to the orderly, professional environment Lucienne had known. While sales were promising, Coco and Antoinette knew nothing about running a business or keeping books. And Coco, imperious by nature, resented Lucienne’s attempts to intervene, and resisted ceding any authority or decision making to her. What’s more, the Chanel girls lacked the discretion and decorum normally found in the best salons. Giddy with their new adventure, playing shop in a posh Paris bachelor pad, the sisters laughed and joked across the studio throughout the day, sometimes launching into the bawdy songs they’d learned as aspiring chanteuses. They ignored Lucienne’s pleas for restraint, just as they ignored her attempts to weed out, or at least segregate, some of the less “desirable” customers—women she deemed too disreputable to mingle with their society customers. Coco flouted such notions regularly, seeing no problem in scheduling simultaneous fittings for both Henri de Rothschild’s wife, the Baroness Rothschild, and his mistress, the beautiful actress Gilda Darthy. A frustrated Lucienne finally walked out—only to be lured back for a time by Coco, whose skills as a smooth-talking saleswoman grew sharper by the day.