Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [106]
At the Paris Polo Club, where Arthur had played so often, there is a large silver trophy inscribed “Arthur Capel Cup.” This was donated by his sister, Bertha, in Arthur’s memory, almost certainly in collaboration with Gabrielle. The top of the cup sports what is a most unusual form of decoration on a polo trophy for the period, a relief band of intertwined circles, or back-to-back Cs. The cup was first presented to a player in August 1922, only nine months after Arthur’s death. These Cs may represent Arthur and Gabrielle’s surnames. With Arthur still uppermost in Gabrielle’s mind, it could well have occurred to her to suggest this decoration to Bertha. Representing Arthur’s and her own name: Capel and Chanel. If not in actuality, in a symbolic fantasy Gabrielle and Arthur would be conjoined.
As for the perfume’s name, the claim that N° 5 was the first perfume to be named simply by a number, rather than the descriptive titles then in vogue, is not correct. As we have seen, Ernest Beaux had already set the precedent several years earlier, when renaming his Bouquet de Catherine with a number: Rallet N° 1. Yet while Rallet N° 1 would drop from the perfume repertoire, the apparently indeterminate name Chanel N° 5 would acquire its own very modern kind of romance. This would help sustain N° 5’s developing myth, in turn assisted by one of the longest and most sophisticated advertising campaigns of the century. The very first image was created by Gabrielle’s friend the caricaturist Sem. Here a slim short-haired girl in a slight blue dress, the same as the ones Gabrielle then wore, ecstatically holds up her hands to a huge bottle of Chanel N° 5.
Whatever the real chronology of the development and launch of Chanel N° 5, shortly after Gabrielle and Dmitri’s return from the south of France, in late spring 1921, Gabrielle invited Dmitri (accompanied by his faithful servant Piotr) to stay with her at Bel Respiro, Arthur’s former house. For a while, this elegant house on the edge of Paris became a rendezvous for Dmitri’s émigré comrades and Gabrielle’s avant-garde artist friends. Then, when Paris closed its doors for the summer vacation, Gabrielle hired a house on the Bay of Biscay, not far from the flourishing southern resort of Arcachon.
Parts of this dramatic Atlantic coastline were frequented in summer by a sprinkling of artists and writers—both those who eschewed the more developed resorts and those with deeper purses who preferred to be more remote in their villas. With the surf breaking against the garden wall of their white villa, the lovers were taken care of by Piotr and Gabrielle’s faithful Joseph and Marie. In the two months they spent by the sea, the days merged quietly one into the other, with swimming and walking on the beach or through the pine woods. While a handful of friends had villas nearby, there were not many visitors. But it seems to have pleased Gabrielle and Dmitri to live quietly like this for a while.
Once the summer was over, Gabrielle launched herself into a venture she had already instituted back in Paris. For some time, she had used her rooms at the Ritz for overnight stays. But shortly before her holiday she had left behind her quiet retreat, Bel Respiro, and taken up residence in a distinguished eighteenth-century hôtel particulier