Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [218]
Enjoying his boast “I’m the first [fashion designer] who has made a name for himself with a name that wasn’t his,” Lagerfeld made it seem smart to do this and highly profitable for Chanel. As a result, several long-established houses have been revamped by new designers. Meanwhile, Lagerfeld claims he is simply “a visitor passing through,” saying, “I haven’t made an empire with my name on it,” but like a mercenary, “I go wherever they pay me. I don’t have to think about marketing, or sales, that’s none of my business.” (The pragmatist in him, nonetheless, adds, “I like to be used by people who invest . . . if you don’t invest, if you don’t spend—the box is closed.”)
Gabrielle is mistakenly portrayed as a hardheaded businesswoman, but like Lagerfeld after her, she was pragmatic and businesslike about her creativity, without its being business that motivated her. She would say, “It was thought that I had a mind for business, I don’t . . . Business matters and balance sheets bore me to death. If I want to add up I count on my fingers.”6 And while her fights with the Wertheimers were about money, their primary source wasn’t a financial one. Rather it was from Gabrielle’s great pride, her insecurity and the fear of losing her independence. Her success arose from her recognition and anticipation of her times, combined with an intelligent employment of the right people to run the business for her. Her business, like her successor’s, was, above all, designing.
Unlike Lagerfeld, Gabrielle never dreamed of working for anyone else. Neither did any relationship, or age, make her feel able to retire from the House of Chanel:
They didn’t understand that, neither men nor the others, that still there was one thing I had done myself—the Maison Chanel is my only possession, the rest was thrown at me. It’s the only thing I’ve made—all I’ve had, I didn’t want anything . . . but everybody was giving me everything. I didn’t want anything from anybody; I had made something on my own.7
As we have seen, Gabrielle’s house became her raison d’être, and she identified with it more than anything: it was her. It also led her to great loneliness.
Lagerfeld, meanwhile, doesn’t profess to have a vocation or a message, and in an interview with the formidable fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, he says, “I have no direction, line, etc. I am not that serious. In fact, I’m not serious at all. That’s why it works.” When asked what he believes his legacy will be, he replies, “I never think what’s going on after me. I don’t care!”8
Multilingual, intelligent, ironic and pragmatic, Lagerfeld prides himself on his culture and appears driven to constant motion. In addition to his multifarious activities for several design houses, his designing portfolio includes costumes and stage sets for theater and film, house interiors, and a steady stream of books, many of which are presentations of his own photographs.
While Lagerfeld’s success at Chanel means he is almost synonymous with Gabrielle’s house, the image he has cultivated has made him almost as iconic a figure as Gabrielle herself. Using her “elements” with great ingenuity, Lagerfeld has gained for himself and Chanel even greater cachet with his interweaving of aspects of Gabrielle’s personal story into his designs. He has created collections based on Russia (Dmitri Pavlovich, Igor Stravinsky) and Britain (Arthur Capel), and made short films referring to episodes in Gabrielle’s life, such as her love affair with Stravinsky. In combination with Lagerfeld’s own image, his fashion has helped create a new version of Gabrielle. Albeit simplifying her, over the years his endless re-creation of her designs has done much to perpetuate Gabrielle’s personal legend for a modern audience. The atmosphere that now surrounds her reminds us that Gabrielle once referred to her life as “the maze of my legendary fame.”
Evoking herself, Gabrielle