Pop Magazine | written by Michael Collins
Photograph ©Aaron Tilley
Pablo Picasso once said that Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel had more sense than any woman in Europe.
Among the many astute, sometimes absurd, quotes attributed to the designer during her 87 years was the line that the legend has a harder life than the subject itself. 'May my legend gain ground,' she mused. 'I wish it a long and happy life.' Since her death in 1971, both the legend and the legacy have become a testament to longevity. Each is currently in reasonable shape despite the character of the age. Presently, the history that relates to the many is re-written to accommodate the fantasies of the few, with the past defined entirely by the crimes it committed. The triumphs that have brought about progress are overlooked, while the modish beneficiaries of these developments rail against the privileges they've inherited. Frequently they call out consumption and consumerism while being slaves to each. They pick their version of the past as easily as they choose a designer brand, a gender, a pronoun, or a condition that sets them up for victimhood. Yet despite this climate the revered House of Chanel survives and thrives. Perhaps because the label is ideally pitched between the present and the past; courting the tradition from a previous era and the technology from the current one, while approaching each with caution. It's an angle a number of us can appreciate. (Like Frank Ocean, I too see both sides like Chanel.) Another strand central to this evergreen success is that Chanel remains loyal to the original outlook of its creator, whatever her personal flaws. Even Coco Chanel’s wartime affiliations, which led to charges of being a 'collaborator', have not resulted in her entirely falling foul of cancel culture. As she once casually quipped : 'It’s the age that is in chaos, not me.'
She haunts us. She walks among us. I've heard - Or did I read it? - that there have been sightings of her over the years; evidence of her ghostly presence at the Ritz hotel in Paris, where she spent her nights from 1937, occupying the same rooms during the invasion of the city, throughout the war and ever after. Rumours too, of her ghostly presence elsewhere, at nearby 31 Rue Cambon, the 18th century building that houses her haute couture atelier and the apartment where she resided during her days. What form does this presence take? What heralds the arrival of ‘mademoiselle' - at the apartment, between the elegant coromandel screens she had installed because of her aversion to doors. Is it the scent of camellias? The flower she was synonymous with from the moment she first pinned it to a belt in 1913; the flower that appeared in the silk linings and gold buttons on her tweed suits; the flower that featured on the casket at her funeral; the flower that was central to the A/W 2023 collection. ('The camellia is more than a theme, it's an eternal code of the house,' declared Virginie Viard, the creative director at Chanel since the death of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019.) The scent of Chanel No 5? Still the world's best-selling perfume, more than a century after its launch in 1921. The rattle from ropes of clunky costume jewellery? Is the swish, spectral figure of Coco Chanel wearing the obligatory bouclé jacket, and seated on the fifth step of the famous mirrored staircase at 31 Rue Cambon? Here she perched, eagle-eyed, when surveying the sashaying models draped in her creations.
At the Ritz there is a suite named after her. The hotel, like Coco Chanel, is Paris - even though she was born in the Loire Valley - where Chanel was so much more than a store. It was a destination in a city that has become less of a destination during this last decade, after taking a succession of hits: from the jihadist terrorist attacks that began with the targeting of Charlie Hebdo to the recent riots following the death of a teenager at the hands of the police. After the earlier terrorist atrocities Karl Lagerfeld said that Paris needed to rally and become Paris again. In the wake of the last war, Ernest Hemingway wrote in 'A Moveable Feast': ‘Paris was never to be the same again, although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed’. This could equally be true of Coco Chanel, who believed the spirit of luxury was more evident in France than anywhere else. To paraphrase Audrey Hepburn, Paris is still a good idea, and for many, so too is Chanel. It’s the age that is in chaos, not me.
As I say, she walked among us for 87 years. As I say, death came in 1971, as the mini-skirt made way for the maxi-skirt, and hot pants gave way to loon pants. The end came one wintry Sunday at the Ritz hotel, where she’d been holed up for some time, dependent on a retinue of staff, while working on what was to be her final collection - ivory tweeds, white evening dresses - the day before her demise. 'You see, this is how one dies,' she informed her maid when the end was nigh. The line has become part of the Coco Chanel lexicon, like those astute quips that led Picasso to credit her with more sense than any other woman in Europe. Of life, she said the one she’d been landed with didn't please her, and so she created another: 'I have succeeded totally in everything I have undertaken.'
At her funeral models filled the front pews at Église de la Madeleine, each sporting that Little Black Dress. She designed it in 1926, in a radical bid to introduce a colour to a woman's wardrobe previously reserved for mourners and servants. (Rumour has it the inspiration came from the nuns at the orphanage of her childhood.) The final, official goodbye was not perhaps the one she anticipated. Those iffy, perverse wartime affiliations had come back to haunt her, and culminated in a more subtle send-off. The stories centred around her relationship, her romance, with a German officer. And what about the other whispers, stories, rumours that have since been documented as fact? That she was involved in Nazi missions; that her code name of ‘Westminster' was a reference to another former lover - the Duke of Westminster. Yet she had a friendship with Winston Churchill that continued after the war. While it was another English man, the esteemed journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, in whom she confided when addressing those accusations. 'Have politics ever riveted your attention?' he asked. 'No,' she replied. 'Mediocrity doesn't appeal to me.'
If her activities during the last war almost destroyed her reputation, it was the first World War that made it. In 1919, she found herself famous, having spent the conflict designing clothes using scarce and basic materials, as she contributed to the developments that would slowly improve the lot of women. She looked to the wardrobe of men, and the clothes of the working class. She produced garments with fabrics and details that freed women's bodies from the sartorial restraints of the past. She introduced the deep pocket, which freed their hands. She improved on this by launching the shoulder strap and the leather quilted 2.55 handbag. The beige jersey she introduced to woman's outfits was originally used for men's underwear. Deep pockets, striped-tops inspired by Breton fishermen, even the suntan - which she made popular among the wealthy holidaying in the French riviera - were previously frowned upon as these were associated with the lowly poor. To the Chanel aficionado, to the most elementary student and dedicated follower of fashion this is familiar territory, but I mention it here to highlight a fact so often overlooked. Coco Chanel believed that beauty didn't have to be confining. She hated extravagance. And here’s that fact: in marking a distinction between style and fashion she, paradoxically, developed a philosophy on taste that could extend to those without the riches of her elite clientele. 'By starting out with what is beautiful,' she said, 'you can always revert to what is simple, practical and cheap.'
Her rebellious nature was as evident in her personal life as in her work, as when she wore men's attire in her early adulthood. Again, to the Chanel aficionado, to the most elementary student and dedicated follower of fashion this might be familiar, but I mention it here to highlight facts overlooked by those modish figures keen to re-write history as they pick their version of the past with the ease in which they choose a designer brand, a pronoun or a gender. Pockets, shoulder straps and women’s trousers are hardly radical at a time in which gender fluidity flies to mystifying extremes. Men can have babies, women can have penises, and anyone that says otherwise will be subjected to the wrath of social media's king mob and punished by hate crime laws. In her own cosmetic way Coco Chanel assisted the changing role of women in society, and advanced the developments that later brought them greater freedoms and wider opportunities. Freedoms that many women feel are under threat, as the gender issue becomes more divisive.
Her outlook has been key in maintaining the success of the House of Chanel since her death. Within three years of her passing sales of Chanel No 5 were on the wane, even though it was available everywhere, despite the price tag. It was this lack of exclusivity, previously so central to the code of Chanel, that was the problem. The number of outlets at which the perfume was available was reduced substantially; the company invested in a major advertising campaign. It worked. In the digital age where so much is available and accessible, and when the word 'inclusivity' has become a mantra, Chanel has once again succeeded by bucking the trend. Something the company founder - a diminutive seamstress from humble origins - would applaud ('in order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different'). Chanel stands alone as a high end designer brand that refuses to sell its wares online. (Wares? Does that sound sacrilegious to an ardent Chanel aficionado?) Yet it has more followers on Instagram than any of its contemporaries (over 40 million), and subscribers to its YouTube channel are heading towards the two million mark. Something the mother of the House would have applauded. As she put it: 'Be the antithesis'.
In recent years, attempts to celebrate the legacy of Chanel have focused on the designs, rather than the founder herself, what with those wartime stories coming to the fore. (The forthcoming exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum - ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’ - is the UK’s first attempt to explore the history of the fashion house.) This changed in 2017 with 'La Donna Che Legge' ('The Woman Who Reads') which toured museums in Europe, and included the personal artefacts of Coco Chanel as well as the library of books that informed her. Literature, like art, had been a major influence. She looked to the avant garde movements of Cubism and Surrealism to find inspiration that became evident within the Chanel ethos - the designs, the advertising. The Chanel No 5 bottle, the black and white branding, the logo that hasn’t changed in something like a century - the minimalism and the modernity of it - remain current and contemporary. Concepts that both anticipated the twenty-first century and are at home in it: like ‘Sound and Vision’ by David Bowie and almost everything by Dieter Rams.
The theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes compared her to a classical author: 'Chanel does not write with paper and ink (except in her leisure time) but with material, with forms and with colours.’ Others considered her an artist, a sculptor, a craftswoman. (I recall reading that it takes 130 hours of craftsmanship, 30 client measurements, and 18 pieces hand-sewn together to create this haute couture Chanel jacket.) The writer Colette said of her: ‘Chanel works with all ten fingers, with her nails, the side of her hand, her palm, pins and scissors..' It's a suitable summing up of a designer who put so much emphasis on creating garments that would free the hands of women. 'My hands look like they are because they are tired,’ Chanel said in her final years. 'They’ve seen so much. This is how I speak.' As with the artist, the writer, who sacrifices the conventional and supportive set-up thought to come with being in a marriage, a family, a relationship, Chanel largely pursued a life alone - something she eventually came to regret - so as to give her focus to fashion, or at least style. The work, the muse, the creative impulse was everything. 'Reality is sad,' she said, 'and the handsome parasite that is the imagination will always be preferred to it'.
It's more than a century since her first shop opened at the famed building on Rue Cambon, and the unchanged name and logo first appeared. It's over seventy years since her post-war comeback collection introduced the famous little tweed jacket. It's over half a century since Coco Chanel died in her rooms at the Ritz hotel in Paris, the day after completing her final collection. She has rightfully been called to account over the company she kept during wartime, and this casts a shadow over her legacy. Therefore the legend has never completely had the long and happy life she wished for it. And what about the whispers, the stories, the rumours that enhance the myth, and advance the legend, and those that share them and believe them? She walks among us, they say; she haunts us they say. Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle. While she once said: 'I would make a very bad dead person because once I was put under, I would grow restless and would think only of returning to earth and starting all over again.'