Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life

by Lisa Chaney

  Gabrielle would say, “People say I’m an Auvergnat. There’s nothing of the Auvergnat in me. Nothing, nothing! My mother was one. In that part of the world… I was thoroughly unhappy… I fed on sorrow and horror, and regularly thought of dying.”13 How Gabrielle had hated her childhood. Meanwhile, on that very day, May 2, 1921, while she chose her secret return to the distant places of her childhood, on the other side of the world, one of her closest childhood companions reached a mournful conclusion.

  From Canada, Gabrielle’s sister Antoinette had continued sending despairing letters to Gabrielle and Adrienne, and they had continued urging her to persevere. But Antoinette was entirely unsuited to her new life. In response, Gabrielle had recently dispatched a young Argentinian with a letter of recommendation to Antoinette’s father-in-law. The reasons are lost with the letter, but he may have been an emissary sent to discover the extent of Antoinette’s plight. Antoinette found the young man entertaining, and within days of his departure for Buenos Aires, she had fled her in-laws’ household, leaving everything behind her.

  Whatever precipitated her departure, once Antoinette arrived in Buenos Aires, her movements are a mystery. All we know is that any hopes she might have had of beginning again were disappointed, because, on May 2, she gave up the struggle and took her own life. This was almost certainly with an overdose of drugs. Until the recent discovery of Antoinette’s death certificate,14 the story has usually been told that she had already died, a year earlier, in 1920, a casualty of the postwar Spanish flu epidemic.15 Gabrielle and Adrienne possibly never knew the real cause of Antoinette’s death. On the other hand, they might have fabricated the Spanish flu story so as to conceal her despairing end and avoid the stigma of another family suicide.

  Gabrielle’s response to her sister’s suicide is nowhere recorded. But Antoinette had been part of Gabrielle and Adrienne’s undertaking to transform their lives, and she had worked hard for her older sister. She had benefited, but in reality, Antoinette had only taken on the trappings of their new lives. She hadn’t possessed Adrienne’s prudence, which would finally lead to her marriage to the man she loved. Nor did Antoinette have the inspired, rule-breaking originality of her sister Gabrielle. In the end, poor Antoinette lacked their tenacity and force of personality. She neither succeeded in marrying “above herself” nor in making herself into a truly New Woman, dependent upon no one but herself. Perhaps there was no connection, but for many years Gabrielle didn’t present a wedding dress at the end of her show, a tradition all the couture houses followed.

  Gabrielle saw Adrienne, and occasionally her brothers, who periodically called on her in rue Cambon. She regularly sent one of them a check, and looked after André, her dead sister Julia-Berthe’s son, mostly away at boarding school. Aside from this, Gabrielle now had very little to do with her extended family. With Antoinette’s death, one more connection with her childhood was lost, and she was a little more alone. Years later, in referring to her relations, Gabrielle would say that no one in her family grew old: “I don’t know how I escaped the slaughter.”16

  As Gabrielle made her secret journey through her past with Dmitri, their sojourn was concluding. Dmitri would write that Gabrielle was “sad that tomorrow our trip comes to an end.” With many miles ahead of them, on the final morning they were up early and drove through rain, then thick snow, until eventually halting for coffee to warm up. Setting off again, Dmitri wrote that “the highway was covered in snow, and the countryside looked Russian. It was rather sad and moving.”17 The weary travelers finally reached Paris, where Dmitri would again ask his diary why it was they had made that detour around Vichy.

  Laughing off rumors of marriage to Gabrielle during his “adventure,” Dmitri was less sanguine about the rumor put around in their absence that she was keeping him. He did nonetheless go and see her the following evening. Moved by her inability to conceal “her sadness that our excursion had come to an end,” Dmitri didn’t leave her suite until two the next morning. The following afternoon, “She had cheered up but was nonetheless very touching.”18

  18. The Lucky № 5

  Work for Gabrielle had long since become a refuge and the place where she could put her feelings aside. She would say that work gave her energy. She had endured the emotional torments of the last two years or so and her creativity seemed unstoppable. The countesses Rehbinder, Castries, Sjorza, Noailles, Doubazow and Moustiers, the princesses Radziwill and Murat, Mme. Miguel Yturbe (wife of one of Gabrielle’s earlier admirers), the Honorable Mrs. Anthony Henley, Mlle. Gabrielle Davelli, Mlle. Cécile Sorel, Mlle. Gabrielle Dorziat and Misia Sert were only a selection of the society women and celebrities making their way to Gabrielle’s salon door.

  In autumn 1920, Vogue had enthused over Gabrielle’s “perfect taste… and her extraordinary perception of the woman of today,” and discussed the variety of Gabrielle’s offerings. A particular cape, then the thing, was “a very smart affair of conservative lines but elaborated with a design in quilting which covers most of its surface… this is both warm and decorative.” Then there were “evening wraps, enveloping capes, superb manteaux of rich-toned velvets embroidered with gold and enriched with otter or sable, very simple in line,” and gowns of lace and tulle, and “sheath frocks.” “The embroideries which she uses are all designed for her, and her laces are unusual and distinctive.”

  Over and again throughout these years, the magazines advised that because at Chanel there was what Vogue described as an “avoidance of extremes, each model at this house suits an amazing variety of types.” Saying that while Gabrielle followed principles that could at first be thought uninteresting — practicality and simplicity — the magazine admired her unerring ability to create “many new effects each season.”1

  Speaking of “eminently wearable and well-designed costumes,” there were “tailored suits in black, beige or grey.” And here we note the colors that were to become Chanel trademarks, establishing their place in her canon. In addition to the tailored suit, there was “the coat-frock, where the frocks cling without side-seams and close at the sides with embroidery or buttons.” Other frocks had loose backs “combined with a closely fitting front which follows the lines of the figure and emphasizes the absence of the corset.”

  It was Poiret, not Gabrielle (as is often said), who first attempted to dispense with the corset. While apparently representing greater freedom, Gabrielle’s much straighter, shape-revealing twenties chemises, often made in diaphanous materials, would have been unthinkable for most women without a corset of some kind. Gabrielle may have been fairly ruthless in her attitude toward women who weren’t as slim as she, but she was also business-minded enough to realize that not everyone had her girlish figure. Consequently, she sold corsets. For Gabrielle, they had the dual purpose not only of pulling in any “excess” plumpness but also of flattening the bust. She had set out to design because she thought contemporary dress unsuitable for the new times; her clothes were in essence made for herself. Thus Gabrielle’s designs looked far the best on androgynous figures like her own.

  Gabrielle’s vacation with Dmitri Pavlovich had helped her still unsteady sense of equilibrium, and in this improved state she was better able to put into effect one of the most important undertakings of her life. At some point between the previous autumn and now, the spring of 1921, Gabrielle had met another young man. His name was Ernest Beaux. Beaux was not to become her lover. Instead, with Gabrielle, he would create Chanel № 5, destined to become the most famous perfume in the world. While so much about the first half of Gabrielle’s life is cloaked in uncertainty, the story of this most iconic of all perfumes — created at around this time — is a major factor in the construction of her myth. A myth, of course, is not the same thing as history, and the history of Chanel № 5 proves stubbornly resistant to reconstruction.

  Yet № 5’s appearance is also typical of an enduring element in the allure of all great perfumes: the secrecy surrounding their ingredients and the manner of their
creation. The provenance of any fine perfume is better thought of with reference to the old alchemists, who in the manner of all secret societies, ensured the idea of exclusivity by keeping their “knowledge” hidden. The alchemist’s exalted claims were never made by the perfumers, but there were parallels. Certainly, the perfumers understood that while they dealt in an art whose methods were practical ones, the process and the results were often intangible.

  Whatever has been written or said to the contrary, it is not actually known how or when Gabrielle Chanel met the gifted young perfumer Ernest Beaux. Even more significantly, no one really knows exactly when Chanel № 5 was created. In fact, from its two creators’ first meeting to the perfume’s inception, its production and its very first sales, Chanel № 5 is shrouded in mystery. But the main reason for this is because, from the outset, Gabrielle and Beaux understood that this was crucial.

  The story has traditionally been told in the following way: Gabrielle had decided she wanted to have a perfume as an accompaniment to her clothes, and during the summer of 1920, Dmitri Pavlovich introduced her to Ernest Beaux, whom he had known through Beaux’s connection with the Russian court. Together, Gabrielle and Beaux now set out to create Gabrielle’s perfume. By early 1921, Chanel № 5 was in production and being launched. The month is often given as May. However, remembering that Dmitri’s diary tells us it wasn’t until a year later — February 1921—that he himself met Gabrielle, it is almost impossible that Gabrielle and Beaux could have made, packaged and launched their perfume between, approximately, February and May of that year. Either Dmitri did not introduce Chanel to Beaux, or if he did, the perfume had to have been launched later.

  While Chanel has become one of the world’s most famous “brands,” without № 5’s high profile, most of us might barely have heard of Coco Chanel, or her part in revolutionizing women’s lives. Although Gabrielle had already begun to formulate elements of her myth by 1921, it was in turn furthered by the creation of Chanel № 5. Both have been perpetuated by the Chanel Company. With № 5’s given date of creation—1921—mired in uncertainty, who was Ernest Beaux, the man who helped make the first Chanel perfume such an outstanding success?

  Beaux’s father was one of the directors of the perfume company A. Rallet & Co., founded in Moscow by a Frenchman and purveyor of fragrance to the Russian court. Ernest joined the company, worked under its enlightened perfumery director and was encouraged to explore both new ingredients for perfume, and contemporary art and culture. He was already celebrated as a perfumer when the revolution drove him and his colleagues to leave Russia.

  The Rallet company based itself outside Grasse, in the south of France, and Beaux arrived in late 1919—having lost everything — to begin his life again. Beaux was noted for his experimentation with synthetic components, including synthetic aldehydes. (Aldehydes are those organic compounds present in various natural materials, for example, rose oil and citrus essence.) His famed early fragrance, Bouquet de Catherine, probably created in 1913, most likely used synthetic aldehydes, which would be essential in the development of Chanel № 5. Between 1919 and 1920, Beaux further experimented on the Bouquet de Catherine formula.

  In 1946, he would give a lecture in which he described his own contribution to Chanel № 5. Questioned about its creation, he said it was “in 1920 exactly, upon my return from the war.” We remember that, in fact, he returned from the war in 1919. Beaux then said that № 5 was launched “at the time of the Cannes Conference,” but this was held in early January 1922. So he has now told us that Chanel № 5 was launched in both 1921 and 1922. In the end, all we know is that at some point in 1920, or 1921, Beaux was introduced to Gabrielle, and they began developing the new fragrance. Like Gabrielle herself, the true provenance of № 5 has been converted into a myth.

  Despite Misia Sert’s urge to take credit for the triumphs of her “protégée” Gabrielle, the following story is, however, plausible. Lucien Daudet, secretary to the empress Eugénie, wife to Napoléon III, had brought Misia an astonishing beauty formula he had unearthed in the papers of the empress. From the hand of a perfume maker to the sixteenth-century queen Catherine de’ Medicis, consort to Henri II of France, was the recipe for the renowned toilet water The Secret of the Medici. Neither exactly a perfume nor a normal cosmetic cream, this was an essence said to repel miraculously the signs of aging. Misia’s claim that she saw the formula’s possibilities, immediately took it to Gabrielle and proposed that she launch a toilet water based upon the recipe is probably correct. As Gabrielle’s name “was then on everyone’s lips, it was in itself a guarantee of success.”2

  Gabrielle liked Misia’s idea, bought the formula and, according to Misia, they set to work, “painstakingly experimenting with a very severe bottle, ultra-simple, almost pharmaceutical, but in the Chanel style and with the elegant touch she gave to everything.”3 Here, of course, we are meant to see Misia’s hand in the earliest version of the unmistakable Chanel № 5 bottle.

  Misia said that within weeks, Gabrielle had launched L’Eau de Chanel, and that “it succeeded far beyond our wildest hopes. It was unbelievable.”4 Her story is borne out by a document — in the Chanel archives — for a skin-care product called L’Eau de Chanel signed and dated by Misia: July 1919. This Eau de Chanel may well have been a crucial step on the road to № 5.

  Gabrielle had a preoccupation with cleanliness amounting almost to a neurosis, and she loathed it when someone didn’t “smell good.” Her admiration for the grandes cocottes in part stemmed from their pleasant fragrance. By contrast, speaking of society women, Gabrielle would say, “Ah yes, those women dressed in ball gowns, whose photographs we contemplate with a touch of nostalgia, were dirty… They were dirty. Are you surprised? But that’s the way it was.”5 While all society women were not, of course, unwashed, Gabrielle’s sense of smell was hypersensitive. Decrying this “unwashed” upper class, she also abhorred the simple flower fragrances she said were used to camouflage their bad habits.

  She would say:

  I, who love woman, wanted to give her clothes in which she could be comfortable, in which she could drive a car, yet at the same time clothes that emphasized her femininity, clothes that flowed with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed. I wanted to give her a perfume, but an artificial perfume… I don’t want rose or lily of the valley; I want a perfume that is compound.6

  Gabrielle wanted a perfume that scented a clean female body, a fragrance that through its subtle olfactory message completed her picture of a young, forward-looking woman who was independent, fashionable and desirable. Also important, she wanted a scent that would last.

  With very few exceptions, fragrance had been the province of the perfumers, who also sold them. One rare exception, Paul Poiret, had long since developed a beauty and perfume business in tandem with his couture. But while he had been well in advance of his times, Poiret now lagged behind, and it was Gabrielle’s star that was in the ascendant. She was a master at capitalizing on her own and others’ intuitions, and the practical sources of her success would always derive from combining her singular creative abilities with her talents as an entrepreneur. This always involved having around her a small group, usually invisible to the public, who supported and inspired her. This group of people was fairly fluid, but a handful remained with Gabrielle for many years. In this instance, the person acting as a catalyst for her latest project was the inspired perfumer Ernest Beaux.

  It might at first appear that Gabrielle’s introduction of clothes that were costly and simple was the exact opposite of what she now sought in a perfume: a composite refinement. But, for Gabrielle, these two ideas were entirely complementary. She was never in any doubt that her “simple” clothes were actually artificial, and would say “A dress is artificial, fabricated.” In the same way, she believed a perfume shouldn’t try to emulate nature: it should be a synthesis of the natural. Thus her perfume would be a distillation of complex elements in a bottle of refined simp
licity.

  Misia said that Gabrielle had “the genius’ to see their Eau de Chanel as the beginning of something, and that its success gave her the idea to go beyond a cosmetic and make perfumes too. Gabrielle is normally given the credit for the original concept for Chanel № 5: a synthesis of fragrances. She is famously supposed to have described this to Beaux, who then set about putting it into practice.

  There are various claims involving the originality of Chanel № 5; for instance, it is often said that it was the first synthetic perfume. It wasn’t. It was, however, the first synthetic fragrance created in the twenties. The first “modern” perfume we know of featuring any synthetic components was Fougère Royale, created by Paul Parquet for Houbigant, way back in 1882. (Another early “modern” perfume using synthetics was Jicky, made by Aimé Guerlain in 1889.)

  However, Beaux was one of the earliest perfumers who understood the significance of aldehydes, and his brilliance lay in his ability to blend perfectly the natural and the chemical elements in such a way that the chemicals reinforced the natural. Of almost equal importance was his understanding that the aldehydes kept the perfume stable, thereby making it last far longer once sprayed from its bottle. The use of these chemicals was to revolutionize luxury perfumes.

  When Beaux met Gabrielle, he was experimenting further on Bouquet de Catherine, which contained a pronounced aldehyde element. Early in the recent war, aware of possible sensibilities about the perfume’s namesake, Catherine the Great, the perfume had been renamed. Interestingly, it was now simply a number: Rallet № 1. Almost certainly, Beaux’s researches on Rallet № 1 were what he now brought to Gabrielle. In his lecture, he would say, “I came to present my creations, two series: numbers 1–5 and 20–24. She chose a few, one of which was № 5.” Beaux remembered asking Gabrielle, “What should it be called?” She said that she was presenting her dress collection “on May 5, the fifth (month) of the year; let’s leave the name № 5.”7