by Lisa Chaney
A month or so after The Rite of Spring’s dramatic premiere, Arthur and Gabrielle left for Deauville, the “elegant kingdom,” with its world-renowned racecourse, France’s first polo ground and a sumptuous casino. The resort’s rail link with the capital had made it easily accessible for well-to-do Parisians, and its glamour and proximity to the English Channel proved attractive to the British nouveau riche and upper classes. This in turn meant that the British love of games and sports was catered to with tennis courts and a golf course.
As a young man of distinction and a polo player of note, Arthur was one of the resort’s darlings. And so its habitués looked on with interest as he arrived for the season with the woman rumored to be his live-in mistress, and whose hats were becoming familiar to the beau monde. Vogue had recently given Deauville its stamp of approval as “the summer capital of France,” with the “shortest, gayest, and most exciting season of any of the fashionable resorts on the continent.” Arthur now took a suite of rooms at one of the grandest hotels, the newly opened Normandy, which was connected by an underground passage to the opulent new casino.
While society dismissed the rumored talk of war and flocked to the “summer capital,” Gabrielle was preparing to launch her new venture: with Arthur’s financial backing, she was about to open a new shop. Having chosen with Arthur premises on the rue Gontaut-Biron, the smartest street in Deauville’s select shopping quarter, Gabrielle had hired two country girls as seamstresses, organized the redesign of her shop and begun putting out the word.
Like all resorts, Deauville’s prestige was sustained by the theatricality of its daily life. All events and venues, from the restaurant to the parties and the polo ground to the boardwalk by the beach, relied for their entertainment on the dress and behavior of the visitors. Catering to a community of ever-changing, socially fluid personalities, the resort’s entertainments were promenading, sports and parties. The changes of dress required for the morning promenade; the afternoon’s races, polo, golf; the evenings spent dancing, at the casino or a party called for large and varied wardrobes.
And it was aspects of resort lifestyle that had inspired Gabrielle’s designs. Few women took part in any sports; they were observers dressed in immensely impractical clothes. But for the small group of younger women like Gabrielle, who played tennis or golf or actually went to the beach to swim, what they now wanted was fashion with greater ease of movement.
In Gabrielle’s boutique, with its striped awning proudly bearing the name “Gabrielle Chanel,” she offered clothes and hats based on simplified elements. There were open-collar blouses; simple sweaters; loose, belted jackets and long skirts for relaxed and outdoor living. Most famously, Gabrielle had taken familiar items of men’s practical clothing and turned them to her advantage. The fisherman’s shirts, turtlenecks and oversized sweaters, the polo sweater — Arthur’s having apparently been donned one day because Gabrielle was cold — all these she modified for women. The polo shirt, for example, became an open-necked, belted tunic with sleeves rolled up. Borrowing from those workaday wardrobes, she amazed and delighted her audience by demonstrating that the practical and the everyday could be the source of high style, until then invariably rooted in luxury and the exotic. In a place like Deauville, attuned to the slightest diversion in dress, Gabrielle’s salon immediately set tongues wagging.
Adrienne was once again pressed into service, leaving the boutique several times a day to spend time around the town with friends, sporting one or another of Gabrielle’s outfits. This proved so successful that Antoinette joined the ranks as mannequin, while Gabrielle and Arthur’s circle was also drumming up interest. This first range of clothes was almost certainly ready-to-wear, Gabrielle’s first couture collection coming later. At the beginning of September, the magazine Femina published a full-page illustration evoking the jolly atmosphere around Gabrielle, accompanied by the following puff:
Every morning at the chic hour, groups form outside the fashionable shop. Sportsmen, noble foreigners and artists shout at one another and chat; some, friends of the house, harangue female passers-by, inviting them to come in… “Come on, dear countess, a little hat, just one, only five Louis…!” And one goes in: people chat, they flirt, they show off amazing outfits… Outside it’s a hubbub, the double rank of people sitting down who watch, contemplate and criticize: a non-stop double-stream, moving toward the sea.11
Femina showed Gabrielle with a client and some illustrious friends, including one of the most celebrated contemporary painters, Paul Helleu, and the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian whose aeronautical feats had included the first European public airplane flight, making him one of the most famous men in the world.
We see Gabrielle in a casual white outfit on the boardwalk by the beach, with that length of dark hair caught up and setting off a loose, easy blouse and a long simple skirt. To this she has added an oversized, open-necked cream tunic with large patch pockets, and into her buttoned belt she has tucked a white flower. Pockets were as yet uncommon on the outside of stylish women’s clothing, unless it was for sporting occasions. (British companies such as Burberry made fishing or walking coats with pockets.) Anyone other than the most forward-thinking observer would have regarded Gabrielle’s hands, dug comfortably into her pockets, as audaciously unladylike. In another photograph, Adrienne poses in a wrap coat, and she and Gabrielle stand together smiling broadly in front of the boutique, its “Gabrielle Chanel” awning wafting in the sea breeze.
Recently discovered photographs give a lively impression of the resort’s street theater. Arthur and his stylish friends lounge nonchalantly around the entrance to Gabrielle’s salon. In another photograph, a group of celebrities passes the time of day on comfortable chairs in front of the salon. Paul Helleu and his friend Giovanni Boldini (also friend to Edgar Degas), probably then the most successful portrait painter in Paris, sit talking with another friend, Sem, pseudonym of Georges Goursat, the most notable French caricaturist of the day. His studio was near Gabrielle’s boutique on rue Cambon in Paris, and he had been a friend and admirer for some time. Sem was a small man who dressed carefully and whose sardonic pen made those in the public eye fear him. In Jean Cocteau’s characterization of Sem, one senses Cocteau’s defensiveness. Sem was “a ferocious insect… progressively taking on the tics of his victims he pursued. His fingers, his stump of a pencil, his round glasses… his forelock, his umbrella, his dwarfish, stable-boy silhouette — all seemed to shrink into and concentrate upon his eagerness to sting.”12
That summer, Gabrielle captured Deauville’s imagination. Her lover’s social standing, Gabrielle’s own striking appearance and personality and her cohort of admirers combined to help promote and accommodate this young woman of undistinguished background in this most elite of locations. Later, Gabrielle also recalled her own sense of conviction when she said: “The age of extravagant dress, those dresses worn by heroines that I had dreamed about, was past.”13
Among her visitors on the rue Gontaut-Biron was the Baroness Diane “Kitty” de Rothschild, who brought with her Cécile Sorel, one of the capital’s leading actresses. A delicious piece of gossip going the rounds had it that Kitty Rothschild, a devoted client of Poiret’s, had turned up one day at his salon with her retinue of male admirers. They had not only followed the baroness into the dressing room but also entertained themselves by making suggestive remarks to Poiret’s young mannequins. Poiret was at the pinnacle of his career and gave vent to his anger by banishing the Rothschild retinue from his salon. Whether or not this ban was extended to Kitty Rothschild herself is uncertain. Nevertheless, the young socialite let it be known she was intent upon revenge.
Knowing full well that as one of the most fashionable women in Paris, her patronage was invaluable publicity, she shunned Poiret’s salon, putting out the word that she now followed the exciting new designer, Gabrielle Chanel. Soon other stylish young women, such as Princess Baba de Faucigny-Lucinge, née Erlanger; Pauline de Saint-Sauveur and Antoinet
te, pretty wife to the fashionable playwright Henri-Adrien Bernstein, were to be seen in Gabrielle’s salon. Gabrielle and her assistants were kept frantically busy into the new year of 1914.
In March, Gabrielle was given a sensational public endorsement when Sem parodied the foibles of high fashion in a famous series of satirical albums for the newspaper L’Illustration. Titled “True and False Chic,” in them he compared the ostentatious pomposity of contemporary “false chic” with the elegant lines of “true chic,” for him exemplified by the beautiful courtesan Forsane, whom he depicted in a svelte, fur-trimmed outfit by none other than Gabrielle Chanel. Sem soon followed this up with an even more notable cartoon in which Arthur Capel, drawn as a virile, polo-playing centaur, carried off Gabrielle in his arms. Arthur’s polo mallet was the centaur’s lance, on the end of which dangled a hat, while from Gabrielle’s arm hung an unmistakable hat box inscribed with the word “Coco.” The allusions were clear: the well-known playboy Arthur Capel was both lover and sponsor to Gabrielle Chanel, who was now an identifiable enough figure that she could also be caricatured.
10. The End of an Epoque
In the period preceding the First World War, there appears to have been a widespread unwillingness to face the likelihood of conflict. And the closer the impending catastrophe approached, the more a striking acceleration of luxury and high living could be observed. Paul Morand’s fictional hero Lewis says to Irène, “For myself I come with limited responsibility, and… I accept none out of pessimism.”1 Irène replies that this is the easy way out, telling Lewis that “we don’t have any worries if we think the world is meaningless.”2
On August 3, 1914, the opulence of the grand style was overnight curtailed. The West launched into a conflict that would leave it irrevocably altered. Germany had declared war on France; the First World War had begun.
On the following day, Britain entered the fray by declaring war on Germany. Twelve days later, Arthur Capel was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Cavalry Division. The contrasting sentiments with Lewis’s declaration above and the fortitude and commitment typifying Arthur’s army service were both echoed in the words he would later write: “Let us get the strong words of Guillaume le Taciturne set firmly in our mind: ‘One does not have to hope in order to undertake, nor does one have to succeed in order to persevere.’”3
By August 24, Arthur had joined the British Expeditionary Force, under orders from General Edmund Allenby (Cavalry Division), which was taking part in the retreat from the Battle of Mons. Mons was the first major action by the British army against the Germans, but while a relatively minor battle in itself, its position meant that it took on considerable significance. Although initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal, what came to be known as the long retreat lasted two weeks and involved considerable loss of life, as a disciplined German army followed in relentless pursuit.
On September 4, the French commander in chief, Joseph Joffre, recognized a major German tactical error and halted the retreating Franco-British armies at the river Marne, only thirteen miles from Paris. Rallying, they overcame the Germans in the first battle of the Marne. When the German commanding officer, General Helmuth von Moltke, heard that his army might now be destroyed, he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be relieved of his command. By September 12, it was all over and the Allies had won the battle. This transformation of a virtual rout into a victory became known as the Miracle of the Marne. But the casualties and deaths in an onslaught where more than two million men fought and almost one hundred thousand had died were nothing compared to the maiming, death and destruction that would follow in the events of this war. Meanwhile, this battle set the stage for four years of stalemated trench warfare along the length of the western front.
On enlisting, Arthur had been sent, with another Englishman, to join a small intelligence unit under George de Symons Barrow. Accompanying “the long retreat,” Arthur and his intelligence comrades went back and forth from the front line to their commanding officers, gleaning as much as they could about the relentless Germans advancing behind them. Intelligence work was difficult, often carried out at night and frequently very dangerous, as revealed by the two anecdotes below. George Barrow wrote that while retreating with the army:
The division crossed the Oise at Compiègne [close to Etienne’s château], and occupied high ground… We were assured that all the bridges… had been demolished. I went at night with Capel to make sure that no… Germans had got across in boats by other means.
We were very hungry, and going into a baker’s shop… got a newly baked loaf of bread… I found a room in a workman’s cottage and Capel found one next door. It was 1 a.m. Very tired, I took off my belt, haversack and sword and threw myself fully dressed on the bed. At 4 a.m. the owner… came to my room and said: “The Prussians are in the village…” I replied: “Impossible: all the bridges are broken.” He said, “It’s true, and I’m off ”… I did not believe him, and was desperately in need of sleep… Then I thought, “It’s not good enough to run the risk…” and dragging myself off the bed went to the door. I heard some shots and bangings at doors… at the far end of the street. At the same moment, Capel rushed out. I got my belt and haversack, left my sword — a useless weapon — behind in my hurry and we jumped into the car, which was facing the wrong way. A thick mist had come up from the river and the engine was cold. It seemed like hours before Capel could start it. Then the car had to be turned in the narrow street. Meanwhile, the door bangings drew closer and closer. At last the car was got round the corner, a hundred yards or less away. One or two shots whizzed close over our heads before we were hidden in the mist.4
Before the great retreat finally came to an end, near Paris, Arthur and Barrow experienced another narrow escape when setting off one night in Arthur’s car to discover the proximity of the enemy. As they drove out of a wood, to their horror a German brigade crossed the road only three hundred yards ahead of them and joined up with several regiments in the fields. Incredulous at not being spotted, Arthur backed stealthily into the wood and turned the car around. Barrow wrote:
I had my eyes fixed on the enemy during the process of reversing and turning and was equally astonished and relieved that not a single German looked in our direction. At last we got around and away to safety. Had we been half a minute earlier or the German brigade half a minute later, we must have met and Capel and I would have seen no more of the war.5
In fact, Arthur and Barrow would both live to see a good deal more of this war.
Behind the lines, forced as the revelers at Deauville had been to face this thing that so many of them had assiduously avoided, people panicked and left the resort. On the fourteenth day of that momentous August, normally the height of the season, Elisabeth de Gramont described how The Normandy, the hotel where Gabrielle and Arthur had stayed, was half closed and The Royal was going to become a hospital. Luxury shops were closing, rental agencies were empty and foreigners were disappearing: “Cars are requisitioned, the price of petrol is going up, and horse-drawn cars demand a hundred francs to go up the hill… Some prudent people… are hiding little bags of gold in their corsets… others are buying petrol.”6
When Paris had almost been cut off by the encircling German army, Joseph Joffre was unable to ensure the safety of the capital and advised the government to retreat to Bordeaux. At that point, up to a third of Paris fled too, and Deauville was once again packed with people as the haut monde flocked to the safety of the hotels and their villas. A number of country properties had been occupied or destroyed in the wake of the advancing German army. One of these was Etienne Balsan’s château, Royallieu, occupied by German staff officers. Retaken during the Battle of the Marne, the Royallieu barracks was then converted into a frontline hospital.
Before Arthur left for the front, he had instructed Gabrielle to remain in Deauville; his instinct was that she should keep her boutique open. Meanwhile, luxury, extravagance, conspicuous consumption of any kind suddenly didn
’t seem appropriate, and practicality became the order of the day. A number of the socialites remaining in Deauville volunteered at the hospital, and a pared-down, unostentatious wardrobe became a practical necessity. Yet while many of the socialites claimed they had “lost everything,” they also spent that strange summer living a life as luxurious as the great resort was able to provide. Unaware that this season was the last of an époque, intimations of change nonetheless led many a wealthy woman to Gabrielle’s door to equip herself with those unfussy clothes she had originally designed with sport and leisure in mind.
And in spite of shortages of material, Gabrielle continued using her initiative and quickly reaped the rewards: her salon was always busy. Mustering her growing number of assistants, she had them sew and sew, and later said, “I was in the right place, an opportunity beckoned. I took it… What was needed was simplicity, comfort, neatness: unwittingly I offered all of that.”7 Elisabeth de Gramont, whose stylish unconventionality made her one of Gabrielle’s early devotees, remembered the tremendous activity in the boutique and the new somberness of women’s wardrobes. Gabrielle recalled the races, just before the war, and said she hadn’t realized that
I was witnessing the death of luxury, the passing of the nineteenth century; the end of an era. An age of magnificence but of decadence, the last reflection of a baroque style in which the ornate had killed off the figure, in which over-embellishment had stifled the body’s architecture… woman was no more than a pretext for riches, for lace, for sable for chinchilla, for materials that were too precious.8
She decried the Belle Epoque tendency to transform women into “monuments of belated and flamboyant art,” and deplored the trains of insipid pastel dresses dragging in the dust. Referring to the decadence of those years, she remembered how there was so much wealth that it had become “as ordinary as poverty.” And that little had changed since the 1870s, “with its frenzy of easy money, of habits of straying from one style to another, of romantically taking its inspiration from every country and all periods, for it lacked a way of expressing itself honestly.”9