74 exited, with a rudeness startling: Michel Déon reported on the vulgar remarks made by the crowd in “Un Flair sans piété,” Nouvelles Littéraires, January 21, 1971.
75 offense extended beyond the sartorial: “Chanel nous ramène le flou d’antan,” La Lanterne, March 25, 1954, Maison Chanel archives.
76 “[These] are phantoms’ dresses”: “Chanel, apôtre de l’effacement,” undated clipping, Maison Chanel archives.
77 “had a very bad reputation”: Rosamond Bernier interview, Maison Chanel, February 26, 2007, 3.
78 Elsa Schiaparelli biographer: Palmer White, private correspondence, Maison Chanel archives.
79 tried politely to greet her: Haedrich, 158.
80 “Mademoiselle was saying”: Ligeour interview, Maison Chanel archives.
81 a lawyer for Pierre Wertheimer: Quoted in Galante, 255.
82 “People no longer know”: Simone Baron interview, France-Soir, February 7, 1954, quoted in Madsen, 288.
83 “At 71, she brings us more”: “What Chanel Storm Is About,” Life, March 1, 1954, 49.
84 “Chanel à la page?”: “Chanel à la page? But No!” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1954.
85 explanation for the Americans’ interest: “Chanel Resumes Easy Lines of the 1930s,” Women’s Wear Daily, February 8, 1954.
86 “I will start with a collection”: “Chanel Designs Again,” Vogue, February 15, 1954.
87 “the easy, underdone sort”: “Paris Collections: One Easy Lesson,” Vogue, March 1, 1954, 101.
88 “[Chanel’s] direct approach”: Virginia Pope, “In the Chanel Spirit,” The New York Times, July 11, 1954.
89 “expected Chanel to become Dior”: “What Were They Expecting?” Petit Echo de la Mode, March 1954; “Chanel reste fidèle à son style,” L’Aurore, February 9, 1956.
90 “For six million Americans”: Untitled clipping, L’Intransigeant, March 8, 1954.
91 “entire collection has been bought”: “On a tout vu,” Le Phare Bruxelles, March 5, 1954.
92 “They’ve been offering women”: Haedrich, 173.
93 more than 90 million: Galante, 207; Madsen, 285.
94 She was free: Upon her death, her share of the perfume royalties would revert to the Wertheimers’ company. Willy Rizzo discussed the details of Chanel’s renegotiated contract with the author in a personal conversation. The details of the contract also appear in Galante, 216–17; Charles-Roux, 643ff; and Berman and Sawaya, 107.
95 “To me, Chanel was not”: Betty Catroux, private correspondence with the author. Catroux later moved on from the Maison Chanel to become the muse and face of Yves Saint Laurent’s studio.
96 “The function of a woman”: Delay, 251–53.
97 “Women are becoming crazy”: Haedrich, 184.
98 “Do not forget that” Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 168.
99 “Paris has rediscovered”: “Chanel redevient Chanel,” République des Pyrénées, October 14, 1954.
100 bits of moss she’d gathered: Fiemeyer and Palasse-Labrunie, Intimate Chanel, 98.
101 “ ‘That’s what I want’ ”: Quoted in Galante, 248.
102 “it is the color of blood”: Delay, 192.
103 scratch or irritate: Ibid., 191–92.
104 ballooning unevenly over the tops: “Chanel Blousing,” Vogue, March 15, 1956, 88.
105 the leg could move forward: “Chanel Suit Casually Fitted,” Vogue, September 15, 1957, 119.
106 “at once dignified and dancing”: “La Jupe Chanel descend dans la rue,” Le Nouveau Candide, May 4–11, 1961.
107 “The purpose of the skirt”: Hélène Obolensky, “The Chanel Look,” Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1964, 44–45, 179.
108 “To the great innovator”: Quoted in Carmel Snow, Harper’s Bazaar, September 10, 1957.
109 “They don’t understand luxury”: Haedrich, 199–200.
110 “the magician of French couture”: “Magicienne de la couture française Coco Chanel va chercher aux USA l’Oscar de la mode,” France-Soir, August 31, 1957, 1–2.
111 “most incredible comeback”: Nan Robertson, “Texas Store Fetes Chanel for Her Great Influence,” The New York Times, September 9, 1957.
112 “ageless designer”: “Chanel: Ageless Designer Whose Young Look Is America’s Favorite,” The New York Times, September 9, 1957.
113 “At 74, Mademoiselle Chanel”: Brendan Gill and Lillian Ross, “The Strong Ones,” The New Yorker, September 28, 1957, 34–35.
114 hardly incidental to her comeback: Some people noted that Chanel looked better after she returned from Switzerland than she had before going. Anonymous sources close to the Maison Chanel confirm Chanel’s recourse to plastic surgery. And photo evidence also strongly suggests that Coco had undergone some surgical enhancement before returning to her career.
115 “At 75, she is still”: Patricia Peterson, “The Chanel Look Remains Indestructible,” The New York Times, August 28, 1958.
116 “The youthful philosophy of dress”: “Chanel: Ageless Designer,” The New York Times, September 9, 1957.
117 “She was the first fashion”: “Throwaway Elegance of Chanel,” Vogue, September 1, 1959, 220.
118 like a well-fitting jacket: As Harold Koda, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, observes, “If you come from a supposedly egalitarian society … a uniform that’s in good taste and [that] everyone can wear … is a fashion you can embrace.… With Chanel, a casual cardigan suit, anyone could wear it, so [Americans] loved it.” Harold Koda, interview with the author, February 2011.
119 “Her return collection”: Peterson, “Chanel Look Remains Indestructible.”
120 “The essence of Chanel”: “Chanel: Ageless Designer,” The New York Times, September 9, 1957.
121 “American women look marvelous”: “Chanel Copies USA—Daytime Programming,” Vogue, October 1, 1959, 138.
122 “a debt of gratitude”: Dorothy Hawkins, “Fashions from Abroad,” The New York Times, August 1, 1956, 20.
123 the housewife’s French cooking class: For a nuanced look at the diverse cultural roles played by France in the lives of postwar American women, see Alice Kaplan’s Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
124 “France is me!”: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 182.
125 to lend her French cachet: Maison Chanel archivist Cécile Goddet-Dirles says, “Vadim passed all his girlfriends through Chanel, where they became ‘official.’ They all came out with the same beige-and-black shoes, the same quilted bag.” Personal interview with author, December 2008.
126 Coco felt ruined the line: Former Chanel première Yvonne Dudel recalled Chanel’s particular aversion to Elizabeth Taylor’s figure: “But have you seen that bosom? Those two babies’ heads? ” Yvonne Dudel interview, June 15, 2005, Champigny-sur-Marne, Maison Chanel archives.
127 measure of glamour or gravitas: Vogue magazine observed, “Chanel … flatter[s] a girl of nineteen or a woman of sixty.” “In the USA: Fashion Naturals by Chanel Who Started the Whole Idea,” Vogue, October 15, 1959, 89.
128 President Georges Pompidou: Quoted in Haedrich, 11.
129 The young American First Lady: Given the pressure for First Ladies to wear American-made clothes, Jacqueline Kennedy’s Chanels may have been copies made for her in America.
130 the besmirchment of Camelot: Karl Lagerfeld has said that Kennedy’s suit was, in fact, a copy of a Chanel, made by her friend, designer Oleg Cassini. But Justine Picardie is probably more accurate when she opines that Kennedy’s suit was actually an officially approved Chanel copy, using a method known as “line-for-line,” invented by Chanel specifically for replicas of her work. Picardie believes that Kennedy’s suit was “fitted and made for Kennedy at Chez Ninon”—one of the companies authorized to produce these suits. Picardie, 304. Although Jacqueline Kennedy continued to wear Chanel after this tragic episode, Coco
critiqued her harshly several years later, when Kennedy wore a white Courrèges dress. “She’s got horrible taste and she’s responsible for spreading it all over America,” Chanel said of Kennedy. “Chanel in Dig at Mrs. Kennedy’s Taste,” The New York Times, July 29, 1967.
131 “Paris is filled”: L’Intransigeant, March 23, 1961.
132 sought to thwart this problem: On the various creative methods of fashion piracy, see Meryl Gordon, “John Fairchild: Fashion’s Most Angry Fella,” Vanity Fair, September 2012.
133 event of any illegal copying: Dior demanded an up-front deposit of 100,000 francs from European buyers and 350,000 from American buyers. Françoise Giroud, “Backstage at Paris’ Fashion Drama,” The New York Times, January 27, 1957.
134 “Fashion should run”: Peterson, “Chanel Look Remains Indestructible”; “Mme Chanel Welcomes Style Copies,” The Richmond News Leader, August 14, 1956; “Chanel Wants to Be Copied!” Louisville Courier-Journal, August 19, 1956.
135 substituting blue scarab buttons: Lilou Marquand recalled finding Chanel suits at aflea market. Haedrich, 171; Marlyse Schaeffer, “Marlyse Schaeffer écrit à Chanel,” Elle, February 23, 1962, 32.
136 organization founded by Lucien Lelong: Haedrich, 171.
137 recalling her own childhood guardians: Charles-Roux, 222.
138 president of the chambre: Galante, 220; Madsen, 295.
139 to drop its press embargo: Madsen, 295.
140 “In the end, we are left”: Quoted in Patrick Grainville, “Coco Chanel: Une Vie qui ne tenait qu’à un fil,” Mise à jour, November 27, 2008.
141 quilted bag; the piles: Chanel had met Chaplin years earlier on the Riviera and reencountered him in the 1950s in Switzerland, where he, too, sought exile from politicai woes—in his case the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. She asked him how he’d come up with his costume. Delay, 236.
142 patches of her scalp: Former Chanel model Delphine Bonneval interview, May 14, 2008:
Mademoiselle wore the same suit all the time. It was off-white, trimmed with navy.… She wore it always with her hat, a silk or chiffon scarf, a necklace of big pearls, and on top of that, all her jewelry. She wore always many necklaces at the same time. Her suit, always the same, this season a beige wool, trimmed with navy.… Napoleon didn’t change his outfit often either.… And a hat, Mademoiselle Chanel never takes off a hat that, one senses immediately, is her crown. In the midst of all her bare-headed subjects, Coco Chanel is the only one, always, whose head is covered.
Madeleine Chapsal, interview with Chanel, L’Express, August 11, 1960, 15.
143 part of a hairpiece sewn: Odile de Croy interview, April 22, 2008, 6. Galante, 250, discusses Chanel’s hair color, as does Charles-Roux, 215.
144 thinness started looking like fragility: Malcolm Muggeridge described her as “someone tiny and frail, who if one puffed at her too hard, might easily just disintegrate; her powdery frame collapsing into a minute heap of dust, as those frail houses had in the London blitz.” Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time (1972; repr., Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2006), 515. The New York Times mentions Chanel’s weight in Joseph Barry, “Chanel No. 1: World Fashion Legend,” The New York Times, August 23, 1964.
145 “She eats nothing”: Cecil Beaton, The Unexpurgated Beaton, 153.
146 “When you had to go see her”: Bonneval, 5.
147 including the same white blouse: Delay, 196, Marouzé, 8.
148 “We wore nothing but Chanel”: Odile de Croy interview, 5.
149 “In my life as a woman”: Ligeour, 9.
150 “She was a true Pygmalion”: Lilou Marquand, personal interview with author.
151 “She was the first to have”: Moreau interview. Lilou Marquand writes in her memoir that Chanel No. 5 was sprayed in the morning at rue Cambon, but Cuir de Russie was sprayed in the evening. Marquand, Chanel m’a dit (Paris: Editions Lattès, 1990), 28.
152 “as in the army”: Marouzé, 5.
153 without even a bathroom break: Marquand, 76.
154 standing perfectly mute and motionless: Chapsal, 15. During these interminable fittings, Chanel appeared “insensible to certain mute supplications” on the part of her models and staff, according to Madeleine Chapsal.
155 “She was so changeable”: Dudel, 2.
156 “Jean, a poet?”: Madsen, 301.
157 “I must say, it wasn’t a real”: Bernier, 4.
158 “Chanel rattled on”: John Fairchild, Fashionable Savages (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 36.
159 “She would keep people standing”: Rizzo, personal interview, 2011.
160 “That word, ‘vacation,’ makes”: Delay, 202.
161 “I kept her company”: Déon, Bagages pour Vancouver, 10.
162 “borrowing” the man: Ibid., 10.
163 “When you sat on the couch”: Franchomme, 6.
164 spreading false and injurious rumors: “For a long time she denied the existence of my marriage.… She was jealous of it … [and took] vengeance … through [creating] rumors,” writes Marquand, 45.
165 “We left our concerns outside”: Dudel, 7.
166 “She taught me to hate people”: Beaton, 153.
167 “a great talent”: Quoted in Fairchild, 42. Balenciaga returned the compliment. He alone among Chanel’s colleagues had acknowledged how important her comeback would be. “Chanel is an eternal bomb. None of us can defuse her,” he prophesied in late 1953, even sending her a bouquet of flowers to welcome her back. Balenciaga’s flowers only enraged Chanel, who quipped, “Flowers for a coffin. They shouldn’t be in such a hurry to bury me.” Galante, 201.
168 “They’re showing the navel now”: Haedrich, 188.
169 “Saint Laurent has excellent taste”: Quoted in Madsen, 298. Also, Gloria Emerson, “Saint Laurent Does Chanel—But Better,” The New York Times, July 31, 1967.
170 “If my friends tease me”: Delay, 238.
171 the five floors of offices: Chapsal, 15.
172 “It was all because she”: Jean Lazanbon, interview, Maison Chanel, June 27, 2005, 1, 4.
173 tearing up the jacket: Madeleine Chapsal reported watching Chanel cut apart the London-made suit of a male visitor, after which Coco told him there was “no hope” of fixing the suit. Chapsal also recounts a similar episode in which one of Chanel’s models came to work in a Chanel suit the model had purchased for herself. Coco saw something amiss and shredded the seams while the distraught young woman vainly tried to stop her. Chapsal, 15.
174 “Oh we had crazy laughs together”: Moreau, 1.
175 “Oh, she knew how”: Rizzo, personal conversation with author, March 2011.
176 “I thought it was a young girl”: Fairchild, 31.
177 “This is the most beautiful day”: Lilou Marquand, personal interview with author, March 2011. She also recounts a version of this anecdote in her memoir. Marquand, 156.
178 “You will not discover”: Quoted in Vogue, March 1, 1959, 97.
179 eager to assert her dominance: Fern Marja Eckman, “Woman in the News: Coco Chanel,” New York Post, August 19, 1967.
180 “I find that this”: Galante, 272; René Bernard, “La France frappe les trois coups à Moscou,” Elle, August 11, 1961, 22–23; “Moscou: Tout est prêt pour l’exposition française,” Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, August 12, 1961; Michel Clerc, “Chanel à Moscou,” Le Figaro, July 27, 1961.
181 producer Frederick Brisson approached Chanel: The impetus for the project may have come from Brisson’s wife, Hollywood actress Rosalind Russell, who yearned to play the starring role. It would have been a good fit; Russell had the right kind of crackling energy to play Coco. She was known for her vivid portrayals of professional women and big personalities, having won acclaim in Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (1940) playing a quick-witted newspaper reporter opposite Cary Grant, and later starring in Auntie Mame, on both stage (1956) and screen (1958).
182 Brisson, though, persisted for years: Cecil Smith, “Producer Brisson Bursting wi
th Big Plans for ‘Coco,’ ” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1966.
183 particularly Cecil Beaton’s costumes: Chanel would have had occasion to see My Fair Lady in New York during her 1957 trip to the States.
184 “I am not your ‘Fair Lady’ ”: Joseph Barry, “Chanel No. 1: Fashion World Legend,” The New York Times, August 23, 1964.
185 Pierre Wertheimer passed away: The Wertheimer business then passed to his son, Jacques, a man devoted mostly to breeding thoroughbreds. Few considered him equal to the task of running his father’s empire.
186 the far younger Audrey Hepburn: See Edward Jablonski, Alan Jay Lerner: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 245ff.
187 relationship with Spencer Tracy: “Kate had clearly been chosen, at least in part, for the enigmatic sexuality she’d bring to the role,” writes William T. Mann, Hepburn’s biographer. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (New York: Picador Books, 2007), 444.
188 He’d already won two Oscars: Gigi, for which Lerner also won an Oscar, was based on a Colette novel that borrowed heavily from the life story of Coco’s old friend Marthe Davelli, the singer and cocotte who married the titled heir to a great fortune.
189 big floating capes, trailing sleeves: Beaton explained his choices with a veiled critique of Coco: “Chanel’s favorite color, ‘porridge’ [beige], would have been very un-dramatic.… Her understated clothes are very anti-theater stuff,” he said, recalling the main reason Chanel had not succeeded as a Hollywood costume designer back in the thirties. Quoted in Nancy L. Ross, “Seeing Her Own Life: Chanel to Attend Coco Bow,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1969. See also Eugenia Sheppard, “Musical ‘Coco’ May End a Friendship,” Los Angeles Times, November 23, 1969. See chapter 9 for a discussion of Chanel’s work for MGM studios.
190 feature even more Chanel-inspired designs: “Of course, everybody knew the best thing to wear to the play was a Chanel,” wrote the Times. Ellen Brooke of Sportswear Couture told The New York Times that Bergdorf Goodman department store had pushed her to turn out more tweed suits and other Chanel-esque casual clothes, “to tie in with ‘Coco.’… It turned out to be a good idea.” Bernadine Morris, “When in Doubt There’s Always Chanel,” The New York Times, May 14, 1970. Ohrbach’s laid in a supply of all aspects of the Chanel look, from shoes to jewelry, reporting that “business was brisk.” “Will Chanel Star in Stores?” The New York Times, December 19, 1969.
Mademoiselle Page 63