Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [53]
Every morning at the chic hour, groups form outside the fashionable shop. Sportsmen, noble foreigners and artists shout at one another and chat; some, friends of the house, harangue female passers-by, inviting them to come in . . . “Come on, dear countess, a little hat, just one, only five Louis . . . !” And one goes in: people chat, they flirt, they show off amazing outfits . . . Outside it’s a hubbub, the double rank of people sitting down who watch, contemplate and criticize: a non-stop double-stream, moving toward the sea.11
Femina showed Gabrielle with a client and some illustrious friends, including one of the most celebrated contemporary painters, Paul Helleu, and the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian whose aeronautical feats had included the first European public airplane flight, making him one of the most famous men in the world.
We see Gabrielle in a casual white outfit on the boardwalk by the beach, with that length of dark hair caught up and setting off a loose, easy blouse and a long simple skirt. To this she has added an oversized, open-necked cream tunic with large patch pockets, and into her buttoned belt she has tucked a white flower. Pockets were as yet uncommon on the outside of stylish women’s clothing, unless it was for sporting occasions. (British companies such as Burberry made fishing or walking coats with pockets.) Anyone other than the most forward-thinking observer would have regarded Gabrielle’s hands, dug comfortably into her pockets, as audaciously unladylike. In another photograph, Adrienne poses in a wrap coat, and she and Gabrielle stand together smiling broadly in front of the boutique, its “Gabrielle Chanel” awning wafting in the sea breeze.
Recently discovered photographs give a lively impression of the resort’s street theater. Arthur and his stylish friends lounge nonchalantly around the entrance to Gabrielle’s salon. In another photograph, a group of celebrities passes the time of day on comfortable chairs in front of the salon. Paul Helleu and his friend Giovanni Boldini (also friend to Edgar Degas), probably then the most successful portrait painter in Paris, sit talking with another friend, Sem, pseudonym of Georges Goursat, the most notable French caricaturist of the day. His studio was near Gabrielle’s boutique on rue Cambon in Paris, and he had been a friend and admirer for some time. Sem was a small man who dressed carefully and whose sardonic pen made those in the public eye fear him. In Jean Cocteau’s characterization of Sem, one senses Cocteau’s defensiveness. Sem was “a ferocious insect . . . progressively taking on the tics of his victims he pursued. His fingers, his stump of a pencil, his round glasses . . . his forelock, his umbrella, his dwarfish, stable-boy silhouette—all seemed to shrink into and concentrate upon his eagerness to sting.”12
That summer, Gabrielle captured Deauville’s imagination. Her lover’s social standing, Gabrielle’s own striking appearance and personality and her cohort of admirers combined to help promote and accommodate this young woman of undistinguished background in this most elite of locations. Later, Gabrielle also recalled her own sense of conviction when she said: “The age of extravagant dress, those dresses worn by heroines that I had dreamed about, was past.”13
Among her visitors on the rue Gontaut-Biron was the Baroness Diane “Kitty” de Rothschild, who brought with her Cécile Sorel, one of the capital’s leading actresses. A delicious piece of gossip going the rounds had it that Kitty Rothschild, a devoted client of Poiret’s, had turned up one day at his salon with her retinue of male admirers. They had not only followed the baroness into the dressing room but also entertained themselves by making suggestive remarks to Poiret’s young mannequins. Poiret was at the pinnacle of his career and gave vent to his anger by banishing the Rothschild