Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [104]
With Gabrielle’s sensitivity to her times, her instincts had told her years ago that the manner in which she presented what she sold would be essential to its success. And by 1922, Gabrielle herself had undoubtedly become a crucial part of her message. Her edgily fashionable clothes, her short hair (in 1921, still seen by many as outrageous), her possessions, her lovers, her independence—in all this Gabrielle was in the vanguard of her times. In short, while the private lives of the rich and famous were respected infinitely more than today, Gabrielle was nonetheless becoming fascinating to those who had never met her. In the style journals, “Gabrielle Chanel” had previously been mentioned as the name of the designer who had made this or that highly sought-after dress or hat. Now she was unique among the couturiers in that she was in the society pages as much for herself. She was becoming as newsworthy as her illustrious clients. In the October 1921 issue of the magazine Femina, for example, we see Gabrielle in a photograph with Countess Doubazow, being filmed in “a beautiful garden in the environs of Biarritz.”
Gabrielle had pushed at the old boundaries of acceptability and forged new ones. If appearance is about communicating—and implicit in Gabrielle’s work was her ability to communicate—she was attempting to show women how best they could accommodate themselves to life in this radically altered modern world. What was the kind of appearance that would facilitate their handling of their new society? As Gabrielle said, she was developing her style according to her own needs and, implicitly, the needs of her fellow sex. If fashion articulates and illuminates the moment, Gabrielle did this to a radical degree. For rather than simply following and reflecting what was happening around her, she was ahead, articulating it.
Continually refining who she wanted to be, while never interested in being a revolutionary, Gabrielle was undoubtedly one of the first “modern women.” But when she said, “One day in 1919 I woke up famous,”9 she was being disingenuous. Gabrielle had achieved notice through years of hard work and careful management of her image. En route she had understood, like the best courtesans, that her image was something she must nurture. With this in mind, we find in a small and very rare black and beige catalogue not only the select array of perfumes and cosmetics that, in two years’ time—by 1924—Gabrielle would have developed for her clients, but also a document revealing the essential promotional psychology of the House of Chanel.10
From the very first sentence of the little catalogue’s preface, we are introduced to the idea not only of outstanding luxury, but also that it is something only properly understood by the cognoscenti. Gabrielle draws in her followers by flattering them with the thought that they are the select few, who possess a secret “knowledge”:
Luxury fragrance: it is an expression that has lost much of its value through excessive and improper use . . . The Chanel fragrances, created exclusively for a clientele of connoisseurs devoted to the idea of... an original fragrance, different from all the others . . . Mademoiselle Chanel has succeeded in producing . . . fragrances that so eloquently evoke the Chanel style they rank among her finest creations. For an elite clientele price is a secondary consideration. Mademoiselle understands this . . . These ingredients are combined in the test tubes of a master perfumer . . .
The pride of Mademoiselle Chanel