Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel
Born August 19, 1893 Saumur, France
Died January 10, 1971 Paris
On July First our youngest daughter graduated from medical school,. After the ceremony the family had an observational luncheon at an elegant Manila restaurant. The graduate was wearing a little black dress and a string of pearls. I know Mademoiselle Chanel would have approved.
Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick- 2014- 732 Pages - is a brilliant account of the life of Chanel and the era in which she lived and reigned.
Coco Chanel transformed forever the way women dressed. Her influence remains so pervasive that to this day we can see her afterimage a dozen times while just walking down a single street: in all the little black dresses, flat shoes, costume jewelry, cardigan sweaters, and tortoiseshell eyeglasses on women of every age and background. A bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume is sold every three seconds. Arguably, no other individual has had a deeper impact on the visual aesthetic of the world. But how did a poor orphan become a global icon of both luxury and everyday style while achieving incredible wealth? How did she develop such vast, undying influence? And what does our ongoing love of all things Chanel tell us about ourselves? These are the mysteries that Rhonda Garelick unravels.
Chanel was born into poverty in rural France, abandoned to an orphanage with her sisters by her father, at 19 she attracted the attention of a wealthy man who sponsored her as a milliner. She gave her hats to high fashion wealthy Parisian ladies, soon her sponsor set her up in a shop.
At age 23 Chanel met a young French ex-cavalry officer and textile heir, Étienne Balsan. At the age of twenty-three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d'Alençon as his new favourite. For the next three years, she lived with him in his château Royallieu near Compiègne, an area known for its wooded equestrian paths and the hunting life.It was a lifestyle of self-indulgence. Balsan's wealth allowed the cultivation of a social set that reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites, with all the implied accompanying decadence. Balsan showered Chanel with the baubles of "the rich life"—diamonds, dresses, and pearls. Balsan needed a heir and his family would never have accepted Chanel as a wife. He married an appropriate woman and continued his relationship with Chanel. This began a pattern of relationships with extremely wealthy men.
Chanel had begun designing hats while living with Balsan, initially as a diversion that evolved into a commercial enterprise. She became a licensed milliner in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 rue Cambon, Paris, named Chanel Modes.[29] As this location already housed an established clothing business, Chanel sold only her millinery creations at this address. Chanel's millinery career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat wore her hats in Fernand Nozière's play Bel Ami in 1912. Subsequently, Dorziat modelled Chanel's hats again in photographs published in Les Modes.
In Biarritz Chanel met an expatriate aristocrat, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia. They had a romantic interlude, and maintained a close association for many years afterward. By 1919, Chanel was registered as a couturière and established her maison de couture at 31 rue Cambon, Paris.
In 1918, Chanel purchased the building at 31 rue Cambon, in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris. In 1921, she opened an early incarnation of a fashion boutique, featuring clothing, hats, and accessories, later expanded to offer jewellery and fragrances. By 1927, Chanel owned five properties on the rue Cambon,
In the spring of 1920, Chanel was introduced to the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. During the summer, Chanel discovered that the Stravinsky family sought a place to live, having left the Russian Soviet Republic after the war. She invited them to her new home, Bel Respiro, in the Paris suburb of Garches, until they could find a suitable residence.They arrived at Bel Respiro during the second week of September 1919 and remained until May 1921.She developed a romantic relationship with Igor Stravinsky during this time, but the affair was brie Chanel also guaranteed the new (1920) Ballets Russes production of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps ('The Rite of Spring') against financial loss with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev. In addition to turning out her couture collections, Chanel threw herself into designing dance costumes for the Ballets Russes. In the years 1923–1937, she collaborated on productions choreographed by Diaghilev and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, notably Le Train bleu, a dance-opera; Orphée and Oedipe Roi.
1922, at the Longchamps races, Théophile Bader, founder of the Paris Galeries Lafayette, introduced Chanel to businessman Pierre Wertheimer. Bader was interested in selling Chanel No. 5 in his department store In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors since 1917 of the eminent perfume and cosmetics house Bourjois. They created a corporate entity, Parfums Chanel, and the Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for the production, marketing, and distribution of Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers would receive seventy percent of the profits, and Théophile Bader twenty percent. For ten percent of the stock, Chanel licensed her name to Parfums Chanel and withdrew from involvement in business operations. Later, unhappy with the arrangement, Chanel worked for more than twenty years to gain full control of Parfums Chanel. She said that Pierre Wertheimer was "the bandit who screwed me".
After devopiing a relationship with the Duke of Westminster, the wealthiest man in England she began to favor right wing political views.
Garelick unravels the controversies surrounding Chanel's relationship during W.W. Two when she lived in the Ritz Hotel surrounded by high ranking Nazis while having a romance with a German major, a Baron.
There is much more in this marvelous book.
Rhonda Garelick is dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory, at Parsons School of Design/The New School in New York. She’s the author of three books, and writes on fashion and cultural politics for New York Magazine, The New York Times and many other publications. Garelick received her B.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature and French from Yale.
