Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [199]
A spare, taut, compressed figure hung with jewels, Chanel looks as she did before the War, except that her widely spaced, lively eyes . . . deny the lines around them. That she is a monument to common sense, to logical stubbornness, can be seen in her broad, shrewd face with the wide mouth pulled straight across, the eyebrows determinedly pencilled. Her hands are powerful, broad-knuckled; her sculptor’s strong fingers have unpolished nails.
Then, with the last dress, there was a sudden hubbub and the audience was in a rush to get away. Only a handful of friends remained, including Hervé Mille, Maggie van Zuylen and Gabrielle’s faithful première, Madame Lucie. They strained to congratulate Gabrielle, but she was devastated, silent. While her lawyer would say later, “She accepted defeat with a great deal of dignity, a dignity based on self-confidence,” she also implored Madame Lucie to tell her, had she lost her touch? Unquestionably, memories of Gabrielle’s war record were in the air. Nonetheless, while a good number in the fashion firmament had—to a greater or lesser degree—themselves been collaborators, they would have ingratiated themselves quickly enough if they’d thought Gabrielle’s new collection passed muster.
Meanwhile, one of those whose judgment may in part have been based on criticism of her war record was Lucien François. François, a journalist from Combat, whose power enabled him to make or break reputations, and who was secretly and passionately loathed, insinuated that Gabrielle had had a facelift, and dismissed her: “With the first dress we realized that the Chanel style belongs to other days. Fashion has evolved in fifteen years . . . Chanel has become a legend idealized in retrospect.” He ended with the acid comment: “Paris society turned out yesterday to devour the lion tamer . . . we saw not the future but a disappointing reflection of the past, into which a pretentious little black figure was disappearing with giant steps.”2
While the French press described the beauty of the mannequins, and declared that Gabrielle was still a “personality,” it also weighed in with the opinion that, as a designer, she was finished. The response by the British press was just as negative. The headlines announced: “Chanel Dress Show a Fiasco—Audience Gasped!” One article said, “Once you’re faded it takes more than a name and memories of past triumphs to put you in the spotlight.” In a daze, Gabrielle said quietly, “The French are too intelligent, they will return to me.”3 Afterward, she blamed no one for the show’s failure except the press—particularly the French press. There was, however, to be one major exception: the United States.
The outgoing Parisian editor of American Vogue, Bettina Ballard, was being assisted by Susan Train, a young American who had come from New York three years earlier in a “cold and not that glamorous post-war Paris.” Sitting in the Vogue offices, in the magnificent place du Palais-Bourbon, with the experience of hundreds of collections now behind her, she recalls that day in 1954:
All of Paris knew about it. And American Vogue had decided they were going to do a story on Chanel for the February 15 issue [in those days, Vogue came out bimonthly], and the main collections issue would be in the first week of March . . . Although they cut it in the end, the article started like this, “Trying to direct the flow of Mademoiselle Chanel’s conversation is like trying to deflect Niagara with a twig,” which is absolutely brilliant, because so true!
With the photographer Henry Clarke, Susan was amazed “to discover the mythical Chanel was still alive,” and remembers that:
People at French Vogue had a totally different take. Naturally, because they’d been here during the war and she was “mal vu,” viewed with disapproval . . . After all, staying