Rhonda K. Garelick - Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History

Copyright 2014 by Rhonda K. Garelick

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garelick, Rhonda K.
Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the pulse of history/
Rhonda K. Garelick.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4000-6952-1 (hardback)ISBN 978-0-679-60426-6 (ebook)
1. Chanel, Coco, 18831971. 2. Fashion designersFranceBiography.
3. Fashion designHistory20th century. I. Title.
TT505.C45G37 2014
746.92092dc23
[B]
2014006844

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design: David G. Stevenson
Title typography: Gabriele Wilson
Jacket photograph: Willy Rizzo/Paris Match via Getty Images

v3.1

To know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them.

VIRGINIA WOOLF , MRS. DALLOWAY

I dressed the universe.

COCO CHANEL, 1947

What is Chanel? What every woman is wearing without knowing it.

LEXPRESSMAGAZINE, 1956

Corporate headquarters for the House of Chanel occupies an anonymous building on a cul-de-sac in Pariss fashionable first arrondissement. Stepping inside the lobby, one enters a high modernist templea hushed, windowless cavern of gleaming cream-colored marble, smoked glass doors, and Eames chairs for waiting guests.

Patience is required here, since even after being announced by security guards, all visitors are personally ushered upstairs by a Chanel employee who must penetrate an elaborate series of high-security checkpoints with an electronic badge. For convenience, badges are worn on elastic strings around the neck, often hidden beneath the long ropes of Chanel pearls worn by so many of the (mostly female) employees here, along with chain-link belts, boucl suits, jersey separates, quilted purses, beige-and-black shoes, and hundreds of other iconic objects, which, together with the wafting clouds of Chanel No. 5, conjure the goddess who haunts this temple still. She may have passed away more than forty years ago at the age of eighty-seven, but within these marble walls, the founder of the empire is ever-young, ever-present, and referred to simply as Mademoiselle.

Ask nearly any woman in the developed world if she is familiar with Chanel and you get an instant reactiona little whoosh of breath, a deep awareness. Most men know who she is, too, or rather what it is, since part of what is being recognized is an identity that transcends fashion and even the person herself. For one hundred years and counting, Gabrielle Coco Chanel has exerted global influence as a designer, a businesswoman, a corporate brand, and, finally, as a symbol of feminine privilege and style.

Although Chanel was born in rural poverty and raised in an orphanage with little formal education, by the time she was thirty her name was a household word in France. At the age of thirty, she expanded her business into the international market; thanks in part to the wild success of her perfume, Chanel No. 5 (the first synthetically created fragrance in history), she became a multimillionaire before the age of forty. By 1930, when Chanel was forty-seven, she employed 2,400 people and was worth at least $15 millionclose to $1 billion in todays currency. To this day, every three seconds a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold; it is the most successful perfume in history. The Chanel corporation, founded in 1910, is the highest-earning privately owned luxury goods manufacturer in the world.

Chanels influence extends beyond the long life of her company; it has been woven deeply into global consciousness. Her name remains as recognizable today as it was a century ago, known not only to the millions of customers who buy Chanel merchandise at all price points (from perfume to couture), but also to those who wish they could, and to the millions more who buy the infinitely available copies. Every day, on nearly any urban street corner in the world, a constant dfil of Chanel products (genuine and imitation) streams bythe famous initial motif, those interlocking Cs, emblazoned on handbags and scarves, dangling from necklaces and earrings. Not all of the women sporting these accessories necessarily know that they are wearing someones initials or that Chanel was once a real person, so completely has Chanel the woman blended into Chanel the brand. But they all have faith in the talismanic power of those Cs, in their ability to conjure a little magic, to cast an aura of chic and privilege over their wearer.

I know this because I have been stopping CC-wearing strangers for years to ask them what the letters mean to them. Regardless of social class or whether the Chanels are real, the answers rarely vary. When asked why she had chosen her oversize, rhinestone double-C earrings, one inner-city teenager (who was surprised to learn that Chanel was the name of a real woman) responded: I dont know; its just classy. I like the brand. When asked about her black Chanel sunglasses, an affluent college student first assured me they were real, and then said, It just makes me feel better to have them on. A Chanel executive offered little more in the way of explanation, stating simply that the double-C logo was un vrai ssame de luxea French expression roughly translatable as a truly magical passport [more literally, an open sesame] to luxury.

Chanel would not have minded this odd admixture of fame and anonymity. On the contrary, she would have loved it, for she devoted her life to transcending the personal, to transforming herself (and her name) into an icon of feminine desirability and luxury. She would probably be equally pleased to learn that Chanel has gained popularity in the twenty-first century as a first name for baby girls in the United States. (A few young women now even bear the hyphenated first name Coco-Chanel.)

Through her unique blend of overt and anonymous influence Chanel forged the look of modern womanhood as we know it. Even now, every day, millions of women awake and costume themselves as some version of Coco Chanel, choosing from a vast array of simple and reproducible items that created the streamlined look designed and worn first by Chanel, then by her vast army of customers: skirt suits in neutral colors, trousers, cardigan sweaters, jersey knits, T-shirts, flat shoes, the little black dress, and about a hundred other items we consider wardrobe staples.