Mademoiselle
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126 “One of [Chanel’s] great loves”: Countess Isabella Vacani von Fechtmann, personal interview with the author, Genoa, Italy, March 2011.
127 work for German interests: See chapter 11 of The Labyrinth: “The Plot to Kidnap the Duke of Windsor,” 118–34.
128 a rather harebrained scheme: As Reinhard Doerries writes, “What Coco Chanel presented was a complicated hackneyed undertaking that had little or no chance of success.” Doerries, 166.
129 other Anglo-German strategies: See Petropoulos, 211ff.
130 “godmother” to French troops: Jean Marais, Histoires de ma vie (Paris: Albin Michel, 1975), 171. In 1942, when Robert Streitz, architect of La Pausa, asked Chanel to intervene on behalf of his friend Professor Serge Voronoff, a member of the French Resistance who had been arrested by the Gestapo, she agreed, perhaps intrigued by Dr. Voronoff’s research. He was a forerunner of modern endocrinology, experimenting with “rejuvenation” techniques involving transplanting animal testicles. Galante, 181; Thierry Gillyboeuf, “The Famous Doctor Who Inserts Monkeyglands in Millionaires,” Spring 9 (2009): 44–45, accessed at http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/issue9/Gillybo9.htm.
131 petition to release Max Jacob: In the 1920s, Chanel saw a great deal of Jacob and found him very amusing. They shared an interest in astrology and Max would do her horoscope and read her palm. Charles-Roux, 388.
132 Jacob, the devout Catholic convert: Jacob’s last letter to Cocteau is dated February 29, 1944.
Dear Jean:
I write to you from a train car thanks to the indulgence of the guards who surround us. We will be at Drancy any minute. That is all I have to say. Sacha [Guitry], when they told him about my sister [who had also been imprisoned by the Nazis] said, “If it were him [Max], I could do something!” Well, it’s me.
Love,
Max
Reproduced in Jacob and Cocteau, 600. Charles-Roux details more of Cocteau’s attempts and the details of Jacob’s last days, 608–9.
133 apartment of a French aristocrat: Vaughan, 53.
134 “Coco behaved like a queen”: Lifar later gave himself up but received the indulgent sentence of a one-year suspension from the Paris Opéra. Galante, 185–87.
135 “Joan of Arc’s blood”: Quoted in Haedrich, 140.
136 the doorman at the Ritz: Gold and Fizdale, 296. Cocteau also expressed snobbish disdain for the post-occupation atmosphere in Paris, complaining that the Americans failed to maintain the proper decorum of the Ritz dining room: “At the liberated Ritz American officers have lunch with whores off the street. The great joy one should feel has been negated by a feeling of malaise and sadness.… The organized disorder of the Americans contrasts with the style of German discipline; it is disturbing, it is disorienting.” Cocteau, quoted in Spotts, 230.
137 she scoffed about her interrogators: Haedrich, 144.
138 intervention from her British connections: Charles-Roux claims to have evidence from witnesses that Churchill not only tried to reach Chanel repeatedly by telephone from London at war’s end, but that, failing to reach her, he dispatched a young assistant to Paris to look physically for Chanel. Charles-Roux goes on to claim that the prime minister’s aide found Coco eventually—hiding out just after the liberation in a small hotel on the outskirts of Paris. No other proof of this story exists, but if true, it points to just how anxious Churchill was about what Chanel might say to the authorities. Charles-Roux, 612–17.
139 “Churchill had me freed”: Vaughan, 187.
140 accessory to a treasonous crime: Amy Fine Collins, “Haute Coco,” Vanity Fair, June 1994, 132–48.
141 only transparent lies and excuses: Chanel offered the court a series of lies. She insisted she had traveled to Madrid on perfume business, and that she and Vaufreland had simply run into each other by chance on the train—directly contradicting Vaufreland’s own sworn testimony. She denied knowing she had ever been registered as a German agent. She said she had never made the acquaintance of any SS personnel.
142 well aware of her untruths: Quoted in Vaughan, 198.
143 a letter to Theodor Momm: Schellenberg’s battle with liver disease is discussed in The Nuremberg Interviews, ed. Robert Gellately (New York: Knopf, 2004), 415–32. It’s unclear whether Irene Schellenberg had any knowledge of Chanel’s affair with her husband. Countess Isabella Vacani von Fechtmann claims, though, that Irene was a fiercely jealous woman who, aware of her husband’s multiple affairs, once flew into a rage and tried to throw acid in his face. Walter was saved when Reinhard Heydrich, his commanding officer, swiftly pushed him out of the way.
12. SHOWING THEM: CHANEL RETURNS
1 “They said that I was old-fashioned”: Quoted in Brendan Gill and Lillian Ross, “The Strong Ones,” The New Yorker, September 28, 1957, 34–35.
2 “Luxury is liberty”: Delay, 229.
3 the Beau-Rivage in Ouchy: “Camping out” remark quoted in G. Y. Dryansky, “Camping with Coco,” HFD, April 9, 1969.
4 still suffering from tuberculosis: Although debilitated by his illness, Palasse survived into old age, passing away in 1996 at the age of eighty-nine.
5 an apartment in nearby Chexbres: Galante, 189.
6 permanently severed all ties: Madsen, 269.
7 having frozen his book royalties: Ibid., 264.
8 at the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel: Chaney, 336.
9 “She did this out of affection”: Palasse-Labrunie, personal conversation with author, March 2011.
10 friendship of two eternal cocottes: Jullian, 46. Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie disputes this story, claiming that Chanel merely pulled back Misia’s skin which, slackened by death, had simply become more malleable. Private conversation with author, Yermenonville, France, March 2011.
11 liked to be a surgeon: Marquand, 104.
12 accident in Rio de Janeiro: Charles-Roux, 628.
13 The loss was “devastating”: Palasse-Labrunie, 183.
14 channeling Oscar Wilde: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 166.
15 “My dentist is the best”: Dryansky, “Camping with Coco.”
16 “Never was I in retirement”: Brendan Gill and Lillian Ross, “The Strong One,” The New Yorker, September 28, 1957, 34–35.
17 “The Beau Rivage was”: Michel Déon, Bagages pour Vancouver (Paris: Editions de la Table Ronde, 1985), 20.
18 Egyptian-born wife of the Belgian diplomat: Madsen, 272.
19 Maggie and Coco singing: Ibid., 274.
20 both taken a quantum leap: In his diaries, Cecil Beaton recalls Chanel dismissing women “who spent their lives like Maggie van Zuylen at the bridge table.” Cecil Beaton, The Unexpurgated Beaton: The Cecil Beaton Diaries (New York: Knopf, 2003), 141.
21 fallen prey to Maggie’s charm: See Arianna Huffington, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002), 233ff.
22 “unself-conscious, unconventional”: Personal conversation with a source close to the Van Zuylen family, February 2013.
23 asked about women lovers: Haedrich, 178. Lilou Marquand mentions that certain medications Chanel took actually gave her a faint garlic scent, which made Coco very self-conscious, whence probably her description of herself as “an old garlic clove.” Marquand, 158. I thank Judith Thurman for pointing out the slang meaning in French of “garlic clove” or “gousse d’ail.”
24 fashion photographer Willy Rizzo: Willy Rizzo, private conversation with the author.
25 “They didn’t hide”: Paul Morand, Journal inutile, January 11, 1971, quoted in Chaney, 337, and 420n8.
26 secret of the pendant’s poetry: Fiemeyer and Palasse-Labrunie, 183.
27 having sold his warplanes: Madsen, 266.
28 Coco planned her revenge: Haedrich, 146–47.
29 new series of beautiful fragrances: Chambrun’s wife, Josée de Chambrun, adored the new scents, as did the professional “nose” or perfume expert called in by René de Chambrun to assess the samples. Galante, 192–93.
&n
bsp; 30 for good measure, Samuel Goldwyn: Ibid. On Chanel’s creation of competitive perfumes and the subsequent legal arrangements, see also Madsen, 267ff, and Phyllis Berman and Zina Sawaya, “The Billionaires Behind Chanel,” Forbes, April 3, 1989, 104–8.
31 royalties of 2 percent annually: Historical currency conversion calculated at MeasuringWorth, http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/.
32 “Now, I am rich”: Galante, 193.
33 “Mademoiselle Chanel and Pierre Wertheimer”: Private conversation with the author.
34 tried to seize their business: The odd twists of this story lend some credibility to a theory proffered by historian Countess Isabella Vacani von Fechtmann, whose family had high-level Nazi connections. She believes that, even during the war, among the wealthiest members of French and German society, Nazis and Jews brokered discreet, mutually beneficial deals among themselves, while maintaining a charade of enmity: “My contention is they [the Wertheimers] told [Chanel] to do that [make a public attempt to seize the Wertheimers’ holdings using the ‘Jewish laws’]. To save the house! It worked! The perfumes kept selling. Everyone wanted Chanel, even during the war.” Private conversation with the author.
35 “suggesting something like a Gibson”: “Fashion,” Rob Wagner’s Script, May 1947, 31.
36 “A Paris sensation”: “Vogue’s Eye View: First Impressions of the Paris Collections,” Vogue, March 15, 1947, 151.
37 an unmistakable “bustle effect”: “Dior and Paquin Exhibit Fashions,” The New York Times, February 19, 1947.
38 the “feminine mission” of baby making: These included financial bonuses for women who bore a child within the first two years of marriage, and for families in which only one member of the couple (nearly always the husband) worked outside the home.
39 requested by General de Gaulle: Quoted in Jane Jenson, “The Liberation and New Rights for French Women,” in Between the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Margaret R. Higonnet and Jane Jenson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 281. In the same volume, historians Margaret Higonnet and Patrice Higonnet write of the frequent return, after wartime, to more rigidly enforced gender roles, in order both to accommodate the employment needs of returning soldiers and to counteract the implicit feminization of a country devastated by war: “Postwar rhetoric appeals to a positive reconstruction of a former order, which is presented as ‘organic,’ a golden age of ‘natural’ gender relations.… In the postwar period, the reconstitution of the nation required that society reintegrate returning soldiers.” See Margaret R. Higonnet and Patrice Higonnet, “The Double Helix,” in Higonnet and Jenson, 40.
Historian Claire Duchen has written of the antifeminist policies (not unlike those of Vichy, albeit minus the fascism) resulting from postwar anxieties about population levels: “Public discourse on the question spoke in terms of the ‘feminine mission’ or ‘feminine nature’ and no noteworthy transformation occurred in [the focus] upon the maternal function of women.” Claire Duchen, “Une Femme Nouvelle pour une France Nouvelle,” CLIO: Histoire, Femmes, et Sociétés 1 (1995): 6. “Motherhood dominated the Fourth Republic’s definition of women’s roles in postwar society,” agrees historian Susan Weiner in Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France 1945–1968 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 25.
40 foundered badly since the war: The war and its aftermath had dulled the luster of French haute couture. Many fashion houses had gone out of business; materials remained scarce, and the French economy was still suffering. Even once-loyal customers were defecting from couture, lured away by the attractive, well-made, and far less expensive garments being produced by America’s burgeoning ready-to-wear industry. Christian Dior’s “aggressively indulgent style [was] meant to contrast with wartime shortage[s],” Tony Judt observed in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 234.
41 return of French luxury: Dior biographer Marie-France Pochna writes, “The true power of this new fashion was a catalyst for the universal longing for change, the need to forget empty bellies, run-down apartments and a general feeling of tedium.” Marie-France Pochna, Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New, trans. Joanna Savill (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996), 138. Originally published in French by Flammarion in 1994.
42 Dior’s style resisted low-rent imitation: Pochna, 183.
43 “inverted snobbery of poverty”: Quoted in ibid., 144.
44 retailing below $69.95 for dresses: Values calculated at MeasuringWorth. The goal was clear, as The New York Times explained, citing an interview with counsel for the Maison Dior: “American customers of Christian Dior would be restricted to a small and select group of persons and concerns ‘enjoying the highest reputation.’ ” “No Dress Under $69.95 Will Bear the Name Dior,” The New York Times, July 30, 1948.
45 “In an epoch as somber as ours”: Quoted in “Dior, 52, Creator of ‘New Look,’ Dies,” The New York Times, October 24, 1957.
46 similar visions of Cinderella glamour: Couture is “shapelier than it’s been in years, and the shape is perfect,” trumpeted American Vogue in 1953, adding one proviso: “The only thing that the new line [relies] on is this: the absolute cooperation of corsetry.” “Fashion: The New Line,” Vogue, August 15, 1953, 66.
47 $120 million today: Values calculated at MeasuringWorth.
48 felt like a bitter slap: Annalisa Barbieri, “When Skirts Were Full and Women Were Furious,” The Independent, March 3, 1996; Pochna, 139.
49 one group of shapely provocatrices: “Hold That Hemline: Women Rebel Against Long-Skirt Edict,” See Magazine, January 1948, 11.
50 “Fashion has become a joke”: Galante, 200.
51 “Dior? He doesn’t dress women”: Pochna, 146. In one possibly apocryphal anecdote, Chanel finds herself pushed to return to fashion by an episode involving Marie-Hélène van Zuylen, the daughter of her friend Maggie. According to Axel Madsen, Coco encountered Marie-Hélène in Switzerland when the younger woman had just bought a new ball gown in the style made popular by Dior: boned, corseted, with an enormous skirt. The dress so irritated Coco that she insisted on whipping up an alternative gown for Marie-Hélène. According to this story (which sources close to the Van Zuylen family cannot confirm) Chanel had no fabric and so resorted to using some crimson taffeta drapes she found at the Van Zuylen château. Out of this material, Coco created a youthful trademark Chanel-style gown for her young friend, which garnered such lavish praise at the ball that Coco was convinced to return to fashion. Madsen, 267. While the story may not be true, it has odd symbolic weight. Any movie buff will recognize the anecdote as recalling the famous scene in Gone with the Wind (1939) when a penniless Scarlett O’Hara tears down some velvet draperies to make a gown for herself. It is likely that Chanel, who enjoyed Hollywood cinema, circulated this story about herself—placing herself directly into American popular culture as a kind of latter-day Scarlett—a heroine who rises from abject poverty and reinvents herself several times.
52 Financial concerns played a role: Amy Fine Collins has suggested that the Wertheimers themselves approached Chanel about making a comeback, specifically to improve perfume sales. Lucien François reported Chanel’s denial of any financial motive. Lucien François, “Chez Coco Chanel à Fouilly-les-Oies en 1930,” France-Soir, February 18, 1954.
53 reflected prestige of the couture: “High fashion itself is not immensely profitable … but couture can create a tremendous aura, an aura that reflects profitably on any product sold under the Chanel name.” Berman and Sawaya, 106.
54 name fading from public consciousness: Madsen, 282.
55 all misread her completely: Galante, 204; Madsen, 266. Michel Déon writes that Chanel never spoke of returning to work, and that none of her friends seemed ever to suggest it to her. “She seemed to live in her past,” he recalled. Déon, Bagages pour Vancouver, 24.
56 “Know first-class ready-to-wear”: Madsen, 284.
57 “I got the ide
a it would be fun”: Quoted in ibid.
58 correspondence with Snow was leaked: Haedrich, 199.
59 the models found her overbearing: Former Chanel model Ann Montgomery offers a description of Madame Lucie in Another Me: A Memoir (iUniverse, 2008), 143.
60 agreed to work once more: Galante, 201; Manon Ligeour interview, July 8, 2005, Maison Chanel archives.
61 “We were all greatly excited”: Galante, 202.
62 “It was required that we resemble”: Odile de Croy interview, April 22, 2008, Maison Chanel archives, 6.
63 consisted largely of old photographs: Galante, 200.
64 “a real bombshell”: “Chanel is returning to dressmaking February 5,” The New York Times, December 21, 1953.
65 “The news ran through Paris”: Patrice Sylvain, “Le Roman de Coco Chanel,” 1954, unidentified clipping, Maison Chanel archives.
66 “Two thousand people wanted”: Liane Viguié, Mannequin haute couture: Une femme et son métier (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1977), 190.
67 his place in fashion Siberia: François, “Chez Coco Chanel à Fouilly-Les-Oies.”
68 imitation of Chanel’s own gait: “We slouched and pouted. Coco had taught us how to walk—demonstrating herself the gliding gait with hips thrust forward, shoulders tilted back, level turns with hand on hip—a plausible imitation of the debutante slouch so popular in the twenties.” Montgomery, 148.
69 a crowd of Chanel-like figures: “Chanel Designs Again,” Vogue, February 15, 1954, 82–85, 128–29.
70 “In the play of mirrors”: Ibid.
71 “All of Paris burned”: L. Dehuz, “Chez Coco Chanel: Une mauvaise farce,” Maison Chanel archives.
72 “Awaited with impatience”: E. de Semont, “Chanel,” Le Monde, 1954, Maison Chanel archives.
73 “A melancholy retrospective”: F.B.C., “La Collection Chanel n’a pas soulevé l’enthousiasme,” Maison Chanel archives.