Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [219]
The source of Gabrielle’s phenomenal success lay in her instinctive understanding of the new epoch and her anticipation, if not dictation, of what it needed. The source of Gabrielle’s greatness lay beyond simple success. She believed she had been put on this earth for a purpose: “I was working toward a new society.” And dress was only the most visible aspect of more profound changes she helped to bring about. During the course of her extraordinary and unconventional journey—from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour—Gabrielle Chanel had helped forge the very idea of modern woman, and would say: “That is why I was born. That is why I have endured.”10
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Of the many people who have helped me with this book, I owe the first debt of gratitude to my agent, Clare Alexander, whose idea it was. My initial doubts were soon transformed into an obsession. And, while Clare failed to curb this, she has my heartfelt thanks for her unfailing encouragement and professionalism. These were given with habitual good grace during the writing of this most difficult of lives.
Marie Louise de Clermont-Tonnerre, director of external relations at Chanel, kindly gave her support to the writing of the book, making my research at the Chanel Conservatoire possible.
The prime source for Gabrielle Chanel is Paul Morand’s L’Allure de Chanel (copyright © Editions Hermann), and I am most grateful to Arthur Cohen, at Editions Hermann, who so readily gave me permission to quote freely from Gabrielle’s extraordinary memoir. Edmonde Charles Roux was Gabrielle’s first and supposedly exhaustive biographer, but no one can now think of writing anything on her without Morand’s book, published two years after Charles Roux’s.
An apparently endless stream of writing on Gabrielle has appeared since these publications. Pierre Galante’s Mademoiselle Chanel, Marcel Haedrich’s Coco Chanel and Claude Delay’s Chanel Solitaire (particularly insightful with regard to Gabrielle’s inner life) are all notable for their perception and sensitivity. These authors were all Gabrielle’s friends, and I have drawn heavily on their work. Lilou Marquand’s insightful Chanel m’a dit has been helpful.
Mary Davis’s Classic Chic: Music Fashion and Modernism; Valerie Steele’s Paris Fashion: A Cultural History; the contributors to Modern Woman Revisited; Judith Thurman’s magnificent biography of Colette, Secrets of the Flesh; Francis Steegmuller’s indispensable Cocteau; and Eugen Weber’s magisterial Peasants into Frenchmen were of great help in the development of my ideas.
I am much indebted to those below, who kindly gave me interviews and whose knowledge, memories and thoughts have informed this book.
Marika Genty, director of the Chanel Conservatoire, courteously dispensed her encyclopaedic knowledge of Gabrielle the couturier and also contributed her thoughtful and perceptive observations on Gabrielle the person. Jacques Polge, Director of Parfums Chanel, was immensely gracious, and I thank him for a fascinating and thought-provoking conversation about perfume and the mysteries of Chanel N° 5. This was aided by Christopher Sheldrake, director of research and development. Patrick Doucet at the Chanel and Bourjois Perfume Conservatoire showed me the earliest Chanel cosmetics and N° 5 bottles and ably described N° 5’s possible chronology. Julie Dey-dier, of the Chanel Conservatoire, helped me look through the remarkable collection of Gabrielle’s designs, stored away on the outskirts of Paris; Odile Babin was always helpful; and Cecile Goddet-Dirles familiarized me with the large Chanel image database.
Claude Delay generously expanded on her memoir of Gabrielle, Chanel Solitaire, for me; Lady Sybille Derwent (previously of French Vogue) emphasized the unconcerned French attitude toward