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A much smaller group of mourners, including Gabrielle’s great-niece, François Mironnet and Lilou Marquand, later followed Gabrielle’s coffin to Switzerland, where she was laid to rest in the cemetery of Lausanne. Why Switzerland? While deeply French, Gabrielle was also ambivalent about her compatriots, just as some of them were about her. She had said, “The French don’t like me, it can’t be helped.” She had also said, “I have always needed security,” and in Switzerland, apparently, she felt secure. A marble headstone was raised to her, with the heads of five lions, her zodiac sign, carved in bas-relief. Below them is a cross, below that, simply:

GABRIELLE CHANEL

1883–1971

However many words were written on Gabrielle in the weeks after her death, typically, in death as in life, she would manage her legacy. In that remarkable memoir she had given to Paul Morand just after the war, she had “written” her own epitaph:

My life is the story—and often the tragedy—of the solitary woman. Her woes, her importance, the unequal and fascinating battle she has waged with herself, with men, and with the attraction . . . and dangers that spring up everywhere.

Today, alone in the sunshine and snow . . . I shall continue, without husband, without children, without grandchildren, without those delightful illusions . . . My life has been merely a prolonged childhood. That is how one recognizes the destinies in which poetry plays a part . . . I am not a heroine. But I have chosen the person I wanted to be.31

AFTERWORD

Those on Whom Legends Are Built Are Their Legends

Gabrielle once said to Morand, “Contrary to what Sert used to say, I would make a very bad dead person, because once I was put under, I would grow restless and . . . think only of returning to earth and starting all over again.”1

When one of her managers was asked if Gabrielle had thought about the future of Chanel, he retorted, “Certainly not. She was much too egocentric.” Yet while Gabrielle had told her Zurich lawyer that she “longed for peace” and wanted no publicity after her death, she had also been thinking for some time about her successor, and her personal fortune. With regard to that fortune, she did her best to avoid giving any of it to the French state. Taking her lawyer’s advice, that Lichtenstein was a superior tax haven to Switzerland, in 1965 she set up a foundation there—named Coga, after Coco-Gabrielle—and then made her will. This stated: “I establish as my sole and universal heir the Coga foundation.” Having thus bequeathed the majority of her personal estate, Gabrielle made certain bequests to a handful of people. Her added verbal instruction to help the needy, and gifted artists, was sufficiently vague that it is possible nothing has ever been put into effect.

Gabrielle’s manservant, François Mironnet, was apparently at first informed he had “inherited Mademoiselle,” however, the document proving this was never found. The estate did, nonetheless, make an out-of-court settlement with Mironnet. Others who made claims on Gabrielle’s estate were not so fortunate. Over the years, her bankers and lawyers have maintained a stony silence over the Coga Foundation, and its function remains a mystery. So does the extent of Gabrielle’s personal fortune. In 1971, Mironnet claimed it was worth $1.5 billion. The Wertheimer family claimed it was $30 million. It has been estimated that, at the time of Gabrielle’s death, the House of Chanel brought in approximately $160 million annually.

Gabrielle’s manager was mistaken about her failure to contemplate a successor, because several years before her death she had discussed it with more than one friend. Where her manager had been correct was in Gabrielle’s inability to put anything into practice. The House of Chanel had become her final solace, her raison d’être. If she handed it over, there would be nothing left for her but to die. In avoiding choosing a successor, Gabrielle implicitly staved off death.

When it finally came, there was much doubt as to whether