Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [110]
In 1921, when Vogue commented that “the couturiers are still embroidering their way to success,” Dmitri Pavlovich’s sister, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, took advantage of the trend. Marie Pavlovna was short of funds—like all the Russian émigrés—and on the spur of the moment suggested to Gabrielle that she could make the embroidery for her clothes at a better price. Gabrielle was surprised at the suggestion but agreed that Marie should try. Despite Marie’s personal hardship and losses, her attempts at adapting to her fate were impressive. Describing the Russian nobility’s plight, she said they had been “torn out of our brilliant setting . . . still dressed in our fantastic costumes. We had to take them off . . . make ourselves other, everyday clothes, and above all learn how to wear them.”
In only three months, Marie Pavlovna had set up what became a highly successful wholesale workshop, Kitmir, with Russian women machine-embroidering clothes for couture houses and, in particular, the House of Chanel. Marie designed many of the embroideries herself, basing them on her memories from art school, a number of Russian motifs and new research.
It has been customary to say that Gabrielle began embroidering her clothing under the influence of her Russian lover, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. This is quite wrong. Gabrielle had come under the influence of the Russians—Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes and Stravinsky—before her affair with Dmitri; she had been decorating her clothes with embroidery since at least 1917. In addition, from contemporary descriptions, we see that it wasn’t only Gabrielle who used embroidery to decorate her clothing; so were some of her fellow couturiers.
While Marie Pavlovna marveled at seeing her embroideries worn by Gabrielle’s clients, sadly, there are very few examples of them still around. What is left to us from Marie, however, is one of the very best descriptions of Gabrielle at work. As Marie evokes the scene, we see how Gabrielle’s method of creating, first described by Marie-Louise Delay, in Biarritz, has remained quite unchanged. Gabrielle’s cutting, pinning and sculpting of a material on a real woman’s body would become famous—much later, in an age of male couturiers, designing by making drawings alone—for its singularity. In fact, this had been the traditional dressmakers’ accustomed method of working.
After Gabrielle had draped her mannequin with a fabric, in order to see its fall and movement, she would then work in another material, such as a fine calico, until she was satisfied with her design on the girl’s body. From this first model, called a toile, the real material would be cut out by the premières and made into the final garment. In Marie Pavlovna’s description, we see how a real and beautiful female body was and would always remain an essential part of Gabrielle’s inspiration. The girl’s shape and coloring were all part of the inspiration for her transformation of a piece of material into something that could be worn. (She insisted that her mannequins be very slim, and almost all were dark haired, like her.) Marie Pavlovna described her fascination with the way her embroidered materials were transformed into clothes:
For several years to come I watched Chanel’s creative genius . . . She never designed anything on paper and would make a dress either according to an idea already in her head or as she proceeded. I can still see her sitting on her stool . . . with a log fire burning . . . she would be dressed in a . . . dark skirt and a sweater, with the sleeves pushed up above her elbows . . .
The models would be called in one by one from the landing