Mademoiselle

by Rhonda K. Garelick

  10 “qualities necessary for a businesswoman”: Elisabeth de Gramont, quoted in Galante, 30.

  11 “He listened to me”: Vilmorin, 83.

  12 “They’re so ugly!”: In conversation with Marcel Haedrich, Chanel recalled insulting women in this way, attributing it to her deep insecurity: “I was a little girl, frightened of everything, a little provincial who knew nothing.” Quoted in Haedrich, 62.

  13 “He would critique my behavior”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 40.

  14 “I found people so ugly!”: Chanel described to Claude Delay Boy’s concern for her vision and subsequent prodding to see an eye doctor. Delay, 72.

  15 Balsan ceded gracefully: Versions of this story appear in every biography. See Galante, 29; and Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 39ff especially.

  16 Etienne suffered considerable pain: Fiemeyer, Intimate Chanel, 28.

  17 extended trip to Argentina: Ibid.; Delay, 53; Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 39.

  18 Portuguese-Jewish bankers: Other candidates for Capel’s paternity included the Duke of Sussex and even King Edward VII. Charles-Roux, 222; and Haedrich, 55. Claude Delay writes, “His most probable paternity was Péreire, the banker.” Delay, 51.

  19 incorporated this possibility: Describing the background of Lewis, the character based on Boy Capel, Morand wrote: “French on his mother’s side, Lewis was the natural son of a Belgian banker who died before he left college, leaving him with not only very little money [and] a little Jewish blood; or so it was said.” Morand, Lewis and Irene, 34.

  20 substantiates Boy’s illegitimacy: Both Isaac and Emile Péreire died before they could possibly have fathered Capel (Emile in 1875, Isaac in 1880). I have procured a copy of his birth certificate, which was filed in Brighton, England, in 1883, listing his parents, Arthur Joseph and Berthe Lorin Capel. A single irregularity on the birth certificate may explain the whispers about illegitimacy: While the certificate is dated September 8, 1883, it notes that Arthur Edward Capel was actually born two years earlier, on September 7, 1881. Capel’s next oldest sister, Berthe, was born in 1880, yet her birth certificate, too, was delayed and filed in 1883. For some reason then, the Capel family put off registering the births of their last two children. This alone does not prove illegitimacy. The delay might have resulted from the family’s moving from one town to another, or these certificates may represent emendations of earlier ones, which might have contained errors. With thanks to Martine Alison of the Société de l’histoire de la ville de Fréjus for her great assistance.

  Arthur Edward was the Capels’ fourth child, but their only son, and the early decision to call him “Boy”—the nickname appears on his birth certificate—suggests a father’s exuberant delight at his first male child. Boy seems, moreover, to have enjoyed a close relationship with his father. In 1901, father and son even lived together in London, and Boy took over his father’s businesses when Arthur Joseph retired around that same year.

  21 never spoke of his mother: “The Lorins remain frustratingly mysterious,” writes Lisa Chaney, with justification. Lisa Chaney, Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life (New York: Viking, 2011), 66.

  22 convent school for upper-class girls: She is listed as living at the school’s address, 23 Kensington Square, as of the 1871 London census. The Convent of the Assumption opened its doors in London in 1857. In the Catholic Directory of 1876, the Convent described its mission thus: “The Sisters of the Assumption receive a limited number of young ladies of the higher classes for education. French is generally spoken, and the pupils have every facility for acquiring a perfect knowledge of that language. They have also the advantage of the best masters for music, modern languages, singing, drawing, dancing; and, further, at the parent’s desire, they can finish their education on the same system at the Mother House, Auteuil, Paris, or either of the Convents of the Assumption in the South of France.” Quoted in Martine Alison, “T.J. Capel,” 2008.

  23 Boy Capel’s future uncle: By 1873, the charming Thomas Capel, many years older than Arthur Joseph, had already established himself as a prominent figure in London. Martine Alison, “Les Parents d’A.E. Capel,” unpublished article, 2008. Thomas Capel grew quite famous for ministering to the spiritual needs of royals, aristocrats, and beautiful young women. Benjamin Disraeli used him as the model for the character of Catesby in his 1870 novel, Lothair. But after weathering a series of mounting scandals involving pilfered church funds (discovered to have been redirected to Tiffany’s) and liberties taken with pretty congregants, Monsignor Capel was defrocked, whereupon he set off for America to make a clean breast of it. Alison, “T.J. Capel.”

  24 would suggest illegitimacy: Information on marriage certificates accessed at www.​gro.​gov.​uk/​gro/​content.

  25 neither hailed from the bride’s side: Both witnesses were British and connected to the Capels. The first, James Lacey Towle, was the groom’s brother-in-law, married to Elizabeth Capel Towle. The second, James Foley, was the local parish priest.

  26 expanded his business internationally: In 1881, Arthur opened a branch of his business in Cardiff, Wales, and by 1883, he had established himself in Spain and France.

  27 connection to Monsignor Capel: In a December 1885 account of an opera gala, Le Gaulois reported, “In the Baroness de Poilly’s box, an English beauty is visiting, and she is creating a sensation, like a star rising on the horizon. They call her Madame Capel. She is the sister-in-law of Monsignor Capel.” “Bloc Notes Parisiens” Le Gaulois, December 6, 1885. The society column of La Nouvelle Revue mentions Berthe Capel’s presence at a costume ball in 1889, “the very beautiful Madame Capel [was dressed as] a canteen girl during the Revolution.” “Carnet Mondain,” La Nouvelle Revue, July–August 1889, 207. “Madame Capel was deservedly popular,” wrote explorer and travel writer Harry de Windt, “and ‘Tout Paris’ flocked to her delightful semi-Bohemian parties.” Harry de Windt, My Note-Book at Home and Abroad (London: Chapman and Hall, 1923), 171. Thanks to Martine Alison for drawing my attention to this book.

  28 “we have no information”: Etat civil Paris régistre 16ème arrondissement V 4 E 10098, p. 11. Quoted in Alison, “Les Parents d’A.E. Capel.”

  29 rigorous Jesuit institution: Even as a young boy, at l’Institution Sainte-Marie, Boy distinguished himself. At only eight years old, he appears in Le Figaro among a list of Sainte-Marie’s boys receiving prizes for the school year. Boy’s prize was for excellence in “religious instruction.” Le Figaro, August 12, 1889.

  30 several academic prizes: Chaney, 67, 408n9. Excellent research by biographer Lisa Chaney has uncovered records of Capel at Stonyhurst as well as proof of his prizes and membership in a group known as the Gentlemen Philosophers of Stonyhurst—an elite within the elite.

  31 Objects of the Seashore: Insurance inventory of Chanel’s library holdings, Conservatoire Chanel, Paris.

  32 later live for decades: Chanel told some people, including Marcel Haedrich, that she lived briefly at the Ritz in these early days with Etienne and Boy. It is possible one or both of them put her up at the hotel, but other sources say she stayed at Balsan’s apartment when in Paris. It seems likely that if Balsan was supporting her, he’d save money by keeping her in his apartment, but if Capel was in charge of the bills, the Ritz was a possibility. “I was living at the Ritz Hotel. People were paying for me, they paid for everything.” Haedrich, 56.

  33 use of letterhead stationery: Correspondence between Boy Capel and General Henry Hughes Wilson, housed at London’s Imperial War Museum, proves this.

  34 “The first time I saw”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 60.

  35 dyed a deep beige: Ibid.

  36 killed by “African natives”: Chanel told this outrageous lie to HFD [full title unknown] magazine in 1969. Clipping from Conservatoire Chanel. Monsignor Capel is in an October 29, 1911, New York Times article, whose accompanying portrait illustration proves he is the bust on the mantel.

  37 Boy’s family as her own: The bust has long been explained by the Mai
son Chanel as an antiques store purchase that Chanel passed off as a family heirloom depicting an ancestor of her own. In fact, it is unmistakably Thomas Capel, who was known for his distinctive good looks.

  38 “inhaling inspiration”: “I pass my day in the Acropolis … inhaling inspiration.… My dance at present is to lift my hands to the sky, to feel the glorious sunshine and to thank the gods that I am here,” wrote Duncan. Isadora Duncan, My Life (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927, 111), cited in Peter Kurth, Isadora: A Sensational Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2001), 6.

  39 never cared for nudity: Charles-Roux, 200.

  40 invented by Swiss educator: Eurythmics aimed to “put the completely developed faculties of the individual at the service of art,” allowing the body to “become a marvellous instrument of beauty and harmony,” in the words of its founder. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, The Eurhythmics (London: Constable, 1912), 18. Reprinted by Forgotten Books, 2012. For an early discussion of the use of Dalcroze’s method in elementary education, see Lucy Diane Hall, “Dalcroze Eurythmics,” Francis W. Parker School Studies in Education 6 (1920): 141–50. See also Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998); and Lynn Garafola, “Diaghilev’s Cultivated Audiences,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, ed. Alexandra Carter (London: Routledge, 1998), 214–22.

  41 would collaborate closely: Still later in her life, Caryathis would marry the openly gay writer Marcel Jouhandeau, with whom she adopted a daughter.

  42 keeping her body toned: Charles-Roux, 202–10.

  43 sartorial translation: Chanel was certainly not the only fashion designer of this period to make common cause with modern dance. Isadora Duncan found Paul Poiret’s loose, “harem” style outfits perfectly in keeping with her aesthetic, and pronounced him a “genius.” Duncan, 237. Paul Poiret provided costumes on occasion for the “Isadorables,” and Duncan patronized him often for her own offstage wardrobe. See Kurth, 257.

  Poiret also collaborated with the Ballets Russes, designing a line of women’s fashions based on costumes that Léon Bakst had originally created for stage productions. Dance and fashion attracted increasingly similar audiences during these years, with women patrons of the Ballets Russes rushing to sign up for private dance lessons, and fashion designers taking their cues from dance costuming. “Ballet overlapped with fashion in recreation,” Lynn Garafola observed in “Diaghilev’s Cultivated Audiences.” See also Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 291. Bakst also did dress design, a “conflation of categories that ended by fetishizing onstage costume as an object of private consumption for the Ballets Russes audience.” New-style European celebrities wanted to dress to “create a theatrically conceived persona.”

  44 stunned the old gang: Charles-Roux, 225.

  45 at the Hôtel Normandy: Galante, 29.

  46 Deauville: At [Chanel’s]: Femina, September 1, 1913, 462.

  47 “Women: he wanted them”: Morand, Lewis and Irene, 44.

  48 impossible logistically: Delay, 59.

  49 an interest in his future: Ibid.

  50 André’s daughter Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie: Labrunie, personal conversation with author, March 2011, Yermenonville, France.

  51 a distasteful beverage: Delay, 59.

  52 lectures on theosophy: Fiemeyer and Palasse-Labrunie, Intimate Chanel, 47.

  53 “an old theosophist”: Haedrich, 117.

  54 Chinese and Japanese art: Insurance inventory of Chanel’s private library, Conservatoire Chanel, Paris.

  55 “I [broke] two of his teeth”: Charles Baudelaire, “Knock Down the Poor!” in Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, trans. Albert Botin, ed. Joseph Bernstein (New York: Citadel Press, 1993), 161–63.

  56 “Boy Capel introduced me”: Chanel spoke of Baudelaire’s poem in 1944 with former MI6 agent Malcolm Muggeridge in a little-known interview, whose authenticity I have verified. The interview has been made available online by the Baudelaire Society: www.​chanel-​muggeridge.​com/​unpublished-​interview.

  Later in life, Coco would develop an interest in boxing, perhaps finding in it the same kind of vicarious thrill of violence that she seemed to feel reading this Baudelaire poem. In 1938, she (along with Jean Cocteau) helped subsidize the boxing career of “Panama” Al Brown, a black Panamanian American who reclaimed his title as the bantamweight champion of Europe. Soon after, Brown, with Cocteau’s encouragement, switched careers and became a cabaret performer. Delay, 177; George Peeters, “How Cocteau Managed a Champion,” Sports Illustrated, March 2, 1964; Peter J. Bloom, French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 191.

  57 “Of course you’re not pretty”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 40.

  58 “Boy wanted to train me”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 63–64.

  59 “He was only happy”: Ibid., 38.

  60 “We were made”: Quoted in Haedrich, 63.

  61 a young upstart like Chanel: Charles-Roux, 212.

  62 paired with Doucet costumes: E.G. “Farewell Glimpses of Parisians in Paris,” Vogue, January 15, 1913, 96.

  63 most glamorous musical and theater events: Galante, 29.

  64 Charles Dullin and Caryathis: Charles-Roux, 215.

  65 “a harem woman side”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 64.

  66 “sleep with all those ladies”: Haedrich, 64.

  67 “Deauville … was”: Helen Pearl Adam, Paris Sees It Through: A Diary, 1914–1919 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919), 86.

  68 pay highly inflated prices: Charles-Roux, 236.

  69 “became famous very suddenly”: Haedrich, 67.

  70 “A young designer established”: Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge, Un gentilhomme cosmopolite, Mémoires (Paris: Editions Perrin, 1990), 38.

  71 jersey-clad Chanel look-alikes: Charles-Roux, translator Daniel Wheeler, Chanel and Her World (New York: The Vendôme Press, 1981), 116. Originally published in French as Le Temps Chanel (Paris: Editions du Chêne, 1979).

  72 “I was the person people”: Haedrich, 66.

  73 she recalled with distaste: Ibid.

  74 “At the end of that first summer”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 50.

  75 wrote the novelist Colette: Colette, Prisons et paradis (Paris: J. Ferenzci et Fils, 1932), 161–62.

  76 “For an outfit to be”: Delay, 191.

  77 sway and texture: A piece in American Vogue from September 1914, for example, took special notice of a “suede cloth” Chanel was using for a sports coat: “light weight … with a nearly imperceptible twill. It has almost the texture of suede and is used with a raw edge.” E.G., “Deauville Before the War,” Vogue, September 1, 1914, 31.

  78 “No two women”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 58.

  79 a welcoming, silky ease: I must thank the staff of the Conservatoire Chanel for helping me experience different vintage Chanel garments and taking the time to point out their construction and the finer points of their design.

  80 “Everything I know”: Quoted in Galante, 31.

  81 “I admire infinitely”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 59.

  82 “She refused to sew”: Fiemeyer and Palasse-Labrunie, Intimate Chanel, 98.

  83 “I cut an old sweater”: Haedrich, 68.

  84 “ ‘Why are you cutting’ ”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 54.

  85 convention of elaborate coiffures: Chanel did not “invent” short hair; others—notably the models of Paul Poiret—had experimented with wearing a shorter style. But as so often, it was Chanel’s example that sparked and then defined a trend.

  86 “Chanel has on display”: Women’s Wear Daily, July 27, 1914, clipping from Conservatoire Chanel.

  87 permitted rather than hindered movement: For more on the great sea change in women’s work, especially of the upper classes, see G. J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (New York: Delacorte, 2007). Meyer points out that only upper-class women could afford the outlay of expense required for the uniforms necessar
y in their new jobs.

  88 “Chanel’s sport costumes”: “Chanel’s Sport Costumes Increasing in Popularity Daily on the Riviera,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 28, 1916.

  89 “To look once”: “Chanel Is Master of Her Art,” Vogue, November 1, 1916, 65.

  90 to startle passersby: See, for example, Adam, 99–100. A British journalist who spent the war living in Paris, Adam deftly evokes quotidian life during these years, taking special note of those spheres usually considered “feminine”—food, clothing, domestic supplies, etc. Of the huge numbers of working women, she writes, “The increasing appearance of women in civil life … was very remarkable in France. Here … there was even at one time an agitation to withdraw young girls from service in hospital wards, on the grounds that the sights they saw there were not fit for ‘well-brought-up young girls.’… After postwomen, tram conductresses, women ticket collectors, and so forth, Paris is seeing women in charge of hose-pipes.”

  91 salary cuts during the war: As historian G. J. Meyer observes, “For young women who had expected the future to be limited to marriage and childbearing, it all could be wonderfully thrilling.” Meyer, 167. Lower-class women had always worked, of course, and often, the war put an end to their employment. In France, for example, women composed the bulk of the workforce of the garment industry, and thousands found themselves unemployed when factories shut down during the war. See Meyer, 667–70. And after the war, unfortunately, many of the promised and expected gains for women’s rights failed to materialize. France did not grant women the right to vote until 1948.

  92 some tweeds from Scotland: Madsen, 80.

  93 beautiful colors in Lyon: Chanel’s connection to fabric trade specialists of this sort came through Etienne Balsan. Madsen, 80.

  94 skimmed rather than defined: Haedrich, 68–69; Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 53–55; Charles-Roux, 262ff.

  95 declared American Vogue: A.S., “Paris Lifts Ever So Little the Ban on Gaiety,” Vogue, November 15, 1916, 41.

  96 rib-crushing undergarments: Although even here, things are far from simple. As Valerie Steele points out in her excellent, nuanced history of the corset, many women were attached to their corsets, considering them necessary for health, good posture, a shapely figure, and more. See Valerie Steele, The Corset: A Cultural History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003).