Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [52]
A month or so after The Rite of Spring’s dramatic premiere, Arthur and Gabrielle left for Deauville, the “elegant kingdom,” with its world-renowned racecourse, France’s first polo ground and a sumptuous casino. The resort’s rail link with the capital had made it easily accessible for well-to-do Parisians, and its glamour and proximity to the English Channel proved attractive to the British nouveau riche and upper classes. This in turn meant that the British love of games and sports was catered to with tennis courts and a golf course.
As a young man of distinction and a polo player of note, Arthur was one of the resort’s darlings. And so its habitués looked on with interest as he arrived for the season with the woman rumored to be his live-in mistress, and whose hats were becoming familiar to the beau monde. Vogue had recently given Deauville its stamp of approval as “the summer capital of France,” with the “shortest, gayest, and most exciting season of any of the fashionable resorts on the continent.” Arthur now took a suite of rooms at one of the grandest hotels, the newly opened Normandy, which was connected by an underground passage to the opulent new casino.
While society dismissed the rumored talk of war and flocked to the “summer capital,” Gabrielle was preparing to launch her new venture: with Arthur’s financial backing, she was about to open a new shop. Having chosen with Arthur premises on the rue Gontaut-Biron, the smartest street in Deauville’s select shopping quarter, Gabrielle had hired two country girls as seamstresses, organized the redesign of her shop and begun putting out the word.
Like all resorts, Deauville’s prestige was sustained by the theatricality of its daily life. All events and venues, from the restaurant to the parties and the polo ground to the boardwalk by the beach, relied for their entertainment on the dress and behavior of the visitors. Catering to a community of ever-changing, socially fluid personalities, the resort’s entertainments were promenading, sports and parties. The changes of dress required for the morning promenade; the afternoon’s races, polo, golf; the evenings spent dancing, at the casino or a party called for large and varied wardrobes.
And it was aspects of resort lifestyle that had inspired Gabrielle’s designs. Few women took part in any sports; they were observers dressed in immensely impractical clothes. But for the small group of younger women like Gabrielle, who played tennis or golf or actually went to the beach to swim, what they now wanted was fashion with greater ease of movement.
In Gabrielle’s boutique, with its striped awning proudly bearing the name “Gabrielle Chanel,” she offered clothes and hats based on simplified elements. There were open-collar blouses; simple sweaters; loose, belted jackets and long skirts for relaxed and outdoor living. Most famously, Gabrielle had taken familiar items of men’s practical clothing and turned them to her advantage. The fisherman’s shirts, turtlenecks and oversized sweaters, the polo sweater—Arthur’s having apparently been donned one day because Gabrielle was cold—all these she modified for women. The polo shirt, for example, became an open-necked, belted tunic with sleeves rolled up. Borrowing from those workaday wardrobes, she amazed and delighted her audience by demonstrating that the practical and the everyday could be the source of high style, until then invariably rooted in luxury and the exotic. In a place like Deauville, attuned to the slightest diversion in dress, Gabrielle’s salon immediately set tongues wagging.
Adrienne was once again pressed into service, leaving the boutique several times a day to spend time around the town with friends, sporting one or another of Gabrielle’s outfits. This proved so successful that Antoinette joined the ranks as mannequin, while Gabrielle and Arthur’s circle was also drumming up interest. This first range of clothes was almost certainly ready-to-wear, Gabrielle’s first couture collection coming