CHANEL: AN INTIMATE LIFE
BY LISA CHANEY
VIKING
You could be forgiven for thinking there is nothing new to learn about Gabrielle Chanel, the French orphan who created a fashion empire by dressing the world in chic little jersey suits and quilted handbags.
In the 40 years since her death, there have been scores of biographies that claim to have the last word on the woman behind the myth. According to which version you choose, “Coco” Chanel was a French patriot, Nazi spy, doting aunt, cruel sister, opium addict, fine athlete, predatory lesbian or lover of handsome men.
Still, one thing everyone agrees on is that she revolutionised the way women dressed. Out went the fussy frills and loud colours of the Belle Epoque; in came the pared-down lines and monochrome palette that exactly suited liberated young women in the Jazz Age.
And now, Lisa Chaney, Chanel’s latest biographer, is convinced she has found something new. Letters she’s unearthed show that, far from being a stone-hearted seductress who went through men faster than shoes, Chanel found real love with Arthur “Boy” Capel, an English polo-playing tycoon she met in 1908 when she was the mistress of another rich man.
Capel provided the funds that enabled the penniless Chanel to set up a hat shop in Deauville but there was more to the relationship than money.
Chaney shows that his dithering about whether to marry the aristocratic Diana Wyndham caused Chanel real anguish, deepening into lasting depression when the daredevil playboy died in a car accident in 1919. Sleuthing through the records, Chaney has learned that Chanel even bought Capel’s country house, turning it into a shrine to the man she believed was her only chance at lasting love.
Aside from Capel, this biography is mostly a matter of re-interpretation. Chaney thinks it’s important, for instance, to stress the close friendships that Chanel had with avant-garde figures such as Picasso and also Stravinsky, who was one of the many lovers she took in the post-Capel period.
Just as these men had revolutionised culture, so Chanel was radically reshaping the female form. Her short skirts, draped cardigans and two-tone brogues became the unofficial uniform of a new generation of women who expected to be able to run for a tram, play a round of golf and order their own drinks at the bar.
Soon the world’s smartest women flocked to Rue Cambon, the iconic Parisian atelier where Chanel conjured magic from such humdrum materials as jersey, rabbit fur and huge paste jewels. A canny marketer, she used penniless Russian aristocrats as seamstresses to add cachet to her brand of democratic chic. Some asked why she dressed rich women in drab colours or everyday fabrics, but those who recognised the pared-down simplicity hailed her genius.
Chanel didn’t have it all her own way. Her affair with Britain’s richest man, the Duke of Westminster, foundered on her inability to give him the male heir he so needed.
By the mid-Thirties, her style began to look a bit tired: there is a limit to how many times you can reinvent the little black dress. Her “less-is-more” aesthetic looked dull compared with that of surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who dressed the Duchess of Windsor in a skirt with a life-size print of a lobster.
So when the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940, Chanel’s decision to shut up shop may not have been quite the patriotic gesture she claimed. She had to give up her suite at the Ritz to the enemy, but still managed to hang on to a room at Paris’s most prestigious address. There she saw out the occupation in the company of her Nazi lover, Baron Hans von Dincklage.
Many French women were punished for such “horizontal collaboration” but Chanel, the eternal survivor, seems to have slipped through the net. When Paris was liberated in 1944 she put a note in the window of Rue Cambon to say that Chanel No5 was free to all GIs. It bought her enough time to bolt to Switzerland and avoid being charged as a collaborator.
One book published earlier this year claimed she was a Nazi spy, but Chaney would rather gloss over such matters. Happy though she is to ponder endlessly Chanel’s attitude to rich lovers and creative geniuses, there are darker parts of her life into which she would simply rather not pry. - Daily Mail