• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 653 0

she would use the announcement of the dreadful-sounding musical Coco, in New York, with Katharine Hepburn playing Gabrielle, to denounce her fellow designers, via journalists from press and radio invited to her apartment in the rue Cambon. Sitting in her salon on the famous sofa, Gabrielle spoke of the degradation of modern fashion. Its present meandering infuriated her. She hated the miniskirt, said knees were horrible, and that “fashion today is nothing but a question of skirt length. High fashion is doomed because it is in the hands of the kind of men who do not like women and wish to make fun of them. Men dress like women; women dress like men . . . No one is ever satisfied . . . Men used to woo and be tender . . . Boredom of every kind has become an institution.” These and more such remarks were calculated to stir up controversy.

Among fashion designers in France, there had long been a tradition of showing respect for Coco Chanel, but after Gabrielle’s latest diatribe, several no longer bothered with such politesse. Paco Rabanne, Louis Féraud, Philippe Heim, Marc Bohan (Dior), Guy Laroche, Pierre Balmain—all retaliated with comments in their own way as withering as Gabrielle’s. Pierre Balmain was more reserved and attempted to keep his comments impersonal. But he voiced the thoughts of all of them when he said:

It is regrettable that Mademoiselle Chanel chooses to ignore the history of costume. But she knows that every period has been marked by a certain style of dress, imposing the tendencies and tastes of the times, which the designers can do no more than express, each according to his manner . . . Mademoiselle Chanel has every right to be against the short skirt. Nonetheless, this time, she is far from having the unanimous agreement of her colleagues.

What this young man, and most of his contemporaries, did not understand was that, rather than only having reflected her times—the accustomed description of fashion’s role—Gabrielle had been among the few who had led hers.

Meanwhile, she still had a loyal following, and the voyeurs who came to her shows, because she had become a kind of monument. However, there were also empty seats, and the audience wasn’t jostling to congratulate her afterward. And while the fashion house remained a significant “motivating force for the promotion and sales of the perfumes,”21 Gabrielle also admitted, “The House of Chanel is doing well, but fewer orders are being turned down.”22 In fact, she no longer “made fashion news.” And in those moments when she dropped her guard to reveal her vulnerability, Gabrielle was apprehensive and uncertain. At the same time, she was far too intelligent not to appreciate that society was going through radical changes, and observed that “in the time we’re living in now . . . Nothing any more fits in with the lives people lead.”23 And her thoughts of more than half a century earlier spring to mind: “One world was ending, another was about to be born . . . I was in the right place . . . I had grown up with this new century: I was therefore the one to be consulted about its sartorial style.”24

Gabrielle was, though, no longer the first to be consulted about style. Instead, she had become a public figure, whose time was bound up with serving her legendary name. How else was she to absorb that still remarkable physical and emotional energy? But while her frequently abrasive manner drove others to see less of her, there was a small group of young admirers who were more patient.

Gabrielle had always refused to be interviewed for television, but in 1969, her friend the Opéra Comique dancer Jacques Chazot, who had made himself into an indispensable young society figure, wanted to make Gabrielle the first subject of a television series on famous women. He was overjoyed when she agreed. Gabrielle saw much of Chazot and believed that she could trust him. Without any rehearsals or script, in that soft, low voice, belying the incisive authority of her manner, Gabrielle held forth on camera for twenty-five minutes. She concluded with the pronouncement “Well, if