Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Chasnel,[citation needed] known professionally as Coco Chanel (Saumur, France, December 19, August 1883-Paris, January 10, 1971), was a French haute couture designer who founded the Chanel brand. She is the only fashion designer to appear on XX magazine's list of the hundred most influential people of the century. > Time .
She is one of the most renowned designers in history. She stood out for being one of the most innovative during the First World War. She produced a break with the opulent and impractical elegance of the Belle Époque and created a line of casual, simple and comfortable clothing.She also established herself as a designer of handbags, perfumes, hats and jewelry. Her famous tailored tweed tweed tailored suit became an icon of feminine elegance, and her Chanel Nº5 perfume is an iconic product known worldwide.
Raised in a nunnery orphanage, she was known for her steadfast determination, ambition and vitality which she applied to her professional and social life. She achieved success as a businesswoman and social prominence in the 1910s thanks to the contacts her work offered her. Highly competitive, her opportunistic personality led her to make questionable decisions that generated controversy and damaged her reputation, especially her collaboration with the Gestapo during the German occupation of France in World War II. One of her missions at the end of 1943 was to bring a peace offer from the SS to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with the aim of ending the war.
After the war, her love affair with Nazi officer Hans Günther von Dincklage and rumors about her collaboration with German intelligence services (subsequently confirmed by Hal Vaughan in 2011) seriously affected her company and its image, advertising that the competition was in charge of disseminating. However, she was not blamed as a collaborator and managed to reopen her company in 1954, after which she obtained renewed success, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom at first, until her death in 1971.
Biography
Early Years
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Gabrielle Chanel was born in the Hospice General de Saumur, the city's public hospital run by the Sisters of Providence, very close to the Chanels' home. Gabrielle's mother, Eugénie Jeanne Devolle, was a peasant from Courpière, a small town in the north of the Puy-de-Dôme department in Auvergne. Her father, Albert Chanel, born in Nîmes into a family from the Cévennes mountains, was a street vendor who toured the country's markets. When Gabrielle was born, her parents already had a first daughter, barely one year old, Julia Berthe (1882-1912), and the family lived in precarious conditions. Gabrielle was mistakenly entered with the last name Chasnel in the civil registry, but as Jeanne Devolle was too weak from childbirth and her father was absent to sign her birth certificate, the baby's last name remained misspelled. Years later, Gabrielle Chanel would add another alteration to her real name, ensuring that she was baptized Gabrielle "Bonheur" (Happiness), a second name that the nuns at the hospital would have chosen to bring her luck. The name "Bonheur" does not appear, however, in any documents of the time. In 1884, Albert accepted 5,000 francs from Jeanne's family in exchange for him marrying the mother of his children in Courpière. Apart from Gabrielle and Julia, the marriage had four other children: a daughter, Antoinette (1887-1920), and three sons, Alphonse (1885-1953), Lucien (1889-1941) and Augustin (born and died in 1891).
Eugénie Jeanne Devolle died at the age of 31, on February 6, 1895, exhausted by repeated pregnancies, hard work, and tuberculosis. Gabrielle was twelve years old. Her father then entrusted their two sons to public assistance who will place them on farms, while her three daughters were fostered in the Aubazine Monastery Orphanage, Corrèze, run by the Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary, where Gabrielle and her sisters received strict discipline and learned to sew, embroider by hand and iron.
During my childhood I only wished to be loved. Every day I thought about how to take my life, though, in the background, I was already dead. Only pride saved me.Coco Chanel
Chanel always fled from the memory of the Aubazine orphanage, but the austerity of this Cistercian abbey from the 12th century determined her style reinterpreting some of the architectural details of the place, collects Edmonde Charles-Roux in his biography Coco Chanel, L'Irrégulière . His first biographies collect the stories that Coco invented. She claimed bourgeois origins in order to hide her humble status, and claimed that when her mother died, her father traveled to America to seek his fortune and she was left in the care of insensitive aunts. She also stated that she was born in 1893 instead of 1883 and that her mother had died when she was only two years old instead of twelve.
After learning the basics of sewing for six years at Aubazine, on her 18th birthday Chanel was sent to a religious boarding school in the city of Moulins, where her paternal grandparents, Angelina and Henri-Adrien Chanel, resided. The institution enjoyed a good reputation for professionally training girls without resources or pay, and finding them decent employment once their apprenticeship was completed. There she met her young aunt Adrienne, barely two years her senior, who became her friend and her accomplice.
Aspiring for an artistic career
The two young women found employment in a drapery as assistants to a tailor in Moulins.
The men who went to the tailor shop flirted with the young women and invited them to the local cabaret, where Gabrielle was drawn to show business and began singing on the stage of a café-concert de Moulins called "La Rotonde". She was one of the many girls called poseuses, those who entertain the public between the costume changes of the main artists. The money collected was that which they obtained by passing the dish among the audience in appreciation of his performance. It was around this time that Gabrielle received the nickname "Coco", possibly because of two songs in her repertoire that came to identify her: "Ko ko ri ko" and "Qui qu'a vu Coco?", a popular tune that narrated the story of a girl who had lost her dog Coco. Other sources indicate that it could be from cocotte, a French term referring to the kept woman. As a performer, she radiated a youthful charm that fascinated to the usual soldiers of the cabaret.
In 1906 he was in Vichy, a resort town known for its hot springs, which boasted a host of concert halls, theaters, and cafes where he hoped to find success as a performer. His youthful, physical charms impressed those that they carried out tests on her but her singing voice was not perfect and that did not allow her to find a job. Forced to find a job, she decided to enter the facilities of the "Grande Grille" spring, distributing glasses of mineral water. summer season ended, she returned to Moulins and consequently to her old job at "La Rotonde", although hopeless of consecrating herself as a singer.
Balsan and Capel
In Moulins, Chanel met cavalry officer and wealthy French textile heir, Étienne Balsan. At the age of 23, she became his mistress and supplanted the courtesan Émilienne d'Alençon as her favourite. For the next three years, they lived together in his castle Royallieu near Compiègne, an area noted for its forest of equestrian trails and the life of hunting and polo. This lifestyle allowed Chanel to lead a life of wealth and leisure, and fostered her social character at high-prestige parties. Biographer Justine Picardie suggested that the fashion designer's nephew, André Palasse, supposedly the only son of her sister Julia-Berthe who decided to commit suicide, was actually Chanel and Balsan's eldest son.
In 1908, she began an affair with one of Balsan's best friends, the English captain Arthur Edward "Boy" Capel. During her later years, Chanel recalled, "Two gentlemen were bidding for my hot little body."
Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed her in an apartment in Paris and financed her first stores. The design of the bottle of the Chanel No. 5 fragrance has two probable origins attributable to the sophisticated design sensibilities of Capel. It is believed that Chanel adopted the beveled rectangular lines of the Charvet toilet bottles that Capel carried in his leather travel box, or the style of his whiskey decanter that he admired so much that he wanted to reproduce it in "delicate, expensive and exquisite crystal". The couple spent time at various fashionable resorts such as Deauville but Capel was never faithful to her. They remained together for nine years and even continued their relationship after Capel's marriage to English aristocrat Lady Diana Wyndham in 1918.
Capel's untimely death in a car accident in late 1919 was one of the most devastating events for Chanel. Grief-stricken, she began wearing black garments as a sign of mourning and soon designed the so-called "little black dress", which was introduced in 1926 and was described by Vogue magazine as the "garment that everyone will wear". The black dress, available only in that color, was an immediate success and she has been the epitome of understated elegance ever since. After her death, she personally commissioned a memorial to be built at the site of the accident, which she often visited in later years to lay flowers in her memory. In 1945, Chanel, who residing in Switzerland, confided to his friend Paul Morand: "Her death was a terrible blow for me. By losing Capel, I lost everything. I have to say that what followed was not a lifetime of happiness."
Hat designer and first shops
Chanel received lessons from two of the best assistants of Lucienne Rabatte, a popular cloche hat designer who had worked for Maison Lewis. She began making hats while living with Balsan, initially as a hobby that later It led to a commercial business that was notably accepted by her clients, many of whom were close to her lover.
Chanel used to wear her own creations to horse races and attract the attention of those present with her peculiar style of clothing. Her avant-garde outfits, often made up of jodhpurs and t-shirts, contrasted with the elegant dresses of the time. He became a hat maker in 1909 and opened a Balsan-financed boutique on the ground floor of his bachelor's flat on Boulevard Malesherbes. The following year he established his fashion house, Chanel Modes, at 21 rue Cambon in Paris. Her career as a milliner blossomed when stage actress Gabrielle Dorziat used her models in the 1912 play Bel Ami, directed by F. Nozière, and later in the magazine Les Modes.
In 1913, he opened a boutique financed by Arthur Capel in Deauville, where he introduced luxury casual clothing oriented towards leisure and sport. The styles were designed in low-cost fabrics such as jersey and tricot, worn over everything for men's underwear. He had a prime location on a fashionable street in the center of the city, where he sold hats, jackets, sweaters, and so-called marinières (long-sleeved shirts and in a sailor style). She had the support of two members of her family: her sister Antoinette, and Adrienne Chanel, her aunt of almost the same age, who Coco's grandfather had had towards the end of his life. Adrienne and Antoinette were called upon to model her designs and used to commute the city daily and take boat trips to promote her relative's creations. The New Yorker wrote: "The ladies of Deauville awoke a morning and discovered a shocking difference in elegance. stance between her own clothes and Chanel fashion," while Women's Wear predicted great success for her knitted wool sweaters.
Determined to recreate the success she had had in Deauville, Chanel opened a new location in a villa opposite the Biarritz casino in 1915. The city, located on the Basque Coast and frequented by wealthy Spanish clients, had the status of neutrality during World War I, which allowed it to become a zone of excellence for the wealthy and those exiled from their countries due to hostilities. Only a year after its inauguration, the business had been so successful that Chanel decided to reinstate it (by will own) to Capel the money he had lent him as an initial investment. Shortly thereafter, she met Grand Duke Demetrius Romanov of Russia in Biarritz, with whom she had a romantic interlude and maintained a close relationship for many years afterwards.
Consecration in the world of fashion
In February 1916, on the occasion of the presentation of his first autumn collection, his sportswear and jackets appeared for the first time in Vogue magazine. Before long, his models began to be sold in large department stores in the United States. In 1918, he established his fashion house with more than 300 employees in a property located at 31 rue Cambon in one of the most elegant and luxurious neighborhoods in Paris. The following year she was officially registered as a couturière and in 1921 she opened a fashion boutique offering clothing, hats, accessories and later, jewelry and perfumes.
That year, Chanel modeled her company's "CC" logo, which has remained to this day. There are three theories regarding the influences that marked the design. The emblem of the entrance to the Château de Crémat castle of her friend Irène Bratz may have been the inspiration for the logo. Other versions indicate that the windows of the Aubazine church of the orphanage where she spent her childhood or the monogram of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici may have influenced the production of the Chanel brand insignia.
Its consolidation in the world of fashion meant the decline of the career of Paul Poiret, who resisted the practicality, rationalization and stylistic simplification that couturiers, like Chanel, proposed in those years. The designer's understated, elegant styles with understated seam finishes made Poiret's look frumpy and improperly crafted by comparison. The event led to Jean Cocteau satirizing Poiret's outdated designs through his animated cartoon "Poiret out, Chanel in." His fashion house finally went bankrupt in the late 1920s.
In the spring of 1920, around May, the designer met the composer Igor Stravinsky thanks to the impresario of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev. During the summer she learned that Stravinsky's family was looking for a place to live and he temporarily put them up at his home, "Bel Respiro", in the Parisian suburb of Garches, until they finally settled in a more suitable residence. The Stravinskys remained there until May 1921. Chanel, for its part, protected them from losses Stravinsky's new production, The Rite of Spring (1920), through an anonymous present sent to Diaghilev consisting of 300,000 FRF. Diaghilev summoned her in 1924 to design the costumes for his show ballet Le Train Bleu at the Champs-Élysées Theatre.
In 1921, he collaborated with perfumer Ernest Beaux to create his first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which quickly became a success. Based on the perfume of jasmine, the fragrance was the first to bear a designer's name and was packaged in a crystal bottle created by Chanel herself. Quickly, the Société des Parfums Chanel went on to sell other fragrances, such as Chanel No. 22, 31 Rue Cambon, the Gardenia and 28 the Pause. In 1922, during the Longchamp races, the founder of the Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, Théophile Bader, introduced him to the businessman Pierre Wertheimer. Bader was interested in introducing the Chanel No. 5 fragrance in her department store. In 1924, the designer created the Parfums Chanel corporate entity after reaching an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors of the eminent Bourgeois perfume and cosmetics house since 1917. The Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for the production, marketing and distribution of the perfume. They would receive 70% of the profits and Bader a share of 20%, while Chanel the remaining 10%. Angered at the arrangement, she withdrew her involvement from any business ventures and fought for more than twenty years to gain full control of the company. She later referred to Pierre as the "bandit who ripped me off". woolen fabric, Tricots Chanel (later renamed Tissus Chanel), was established in 1928 in Asnières under the direction of the Russian poet and draftsman Iliazd.
Chanel had significant relationships with poet Pierre Reverdy and illustrator and designer Paul Iribe. After ending her affair with Reverdy in 1926, the two continued a friendship that lasted for forty years. The designer was a major component in his poetic output, bolstering his confidence, supporting his creative ability, and mitigating his financial instability by secretly purchasing his manuscripts through his publisher. With Iribe he established his first public jewelry collection, "Bijoux de Diamants", at the request of the International Guild of Diamond Merchants in 1932. They maintained a close bond until their sudden death in 1935 and shared the same reactionary policies. In fact, Chanel financed her anti-republican and ultranationalist monthly newspaper, Le Témoin, which fueled fear of foreigners and promoted anti-Semitism. In 1936, a year after publication ended, the designer veered to the opposite extreme by funding Pierre Lestringuez's radical left-wing magazine, Futur.
One of her longest and most enduring friendships was with Misia Sert, a prominent figure in the Parisian elite and wife of Spanish painter José María Sert. She was drawn to Chanel upon learning of her "genius, deadly wit, sarcasm and maniacal destructiveness.", which intrigued and dismayed everyone." The two women, raised in convents, maintained a friendship based on shared interests, confidences, and drug use. By 1935, the designer had become an addictive drug user by injecting three daily doses of morphine until the end of her life. According to the American journalist Chandler Burr, the biophysicist Luca Turin related an apocryphal story in which he assured that the designer was nicknamed "Coco" because she threw the best cocaine parties from Paris.
Writer Colette, who belonged to the same social circles as Chanel, offered a whimsical description of the dressmaker at work in her atelier that featured in Prisons et Paradis (1932): "If each human face has a resemblance to an animal, so Mademoiselle Chanel is a small black bull. That lock of curly black hair, the attribute of calves, falls on her forehead and reaches her eyelids and dances with any movement of her head ».
Relations with British aristocrats
In 1923, Vera Bate Lombardi, supposedly the illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge, gave Chanel her entrance into the highest levels of British society. He introduced her that same year in Monte Carlo to the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, known privately as "Bendor". During her ten-year romance with the aristocrat, Chanel received extravagant jewelry and a house in the prestigious London Borough of Mayfair. Other rumors indicate that the Prince of Wales Edward of Windsor (later King of Great Britain Edward VIII) had a brief affair with the designer despite the involvement with his cousin, the Duke. Years later, Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, would insist that "passionate, focused and fiercely independent Chanel" and "the prince had a great romantic moment together". Through Grosvenor the designer met one of her her closest associates, Winston Churchill, who called her a "woman of a strong personality, very capable and agreeable" and with whom she forged a lifelong friendship. In 1927, Grosvenor gave the dressmaker a plot of land that he had bought Located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, where she built her villa “La Pausa”, for which she hired the architect Robert Streitz. Streitz's ideas for the elaboration of the staircase and courtyard were inspired by design elements from Aubazine, the orphanage where she spent her youth. When asked why she had not married the duke, the designer replied: «There have been many Duchesses of Westminster. There's only one Chanel."
Designs for cinema
In 1931, while in Monte Carlo, she met Samuel Goldwyn through Demetrius Romanov, a cousin of Russia's Tsar Nicholas II. Goldwyn offered Chanel a $1 million job offer that included designing costumes for the MGM stars twice a year in Hollywood. After accepting the offer, she traveled with Misia Sert to the United States, where she made Gloria Swanson's clothes in Tonight or Never (1931, Tonight or Never) and Ina Claire in The Greeks Had A Word for Them (1932, Three Blondes). On the other hand, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich became private clients. Her experience producing costumes for American films gave her a dislike for the Hollywood film industry and culture, which she called "childish". The designer stated: "Hollywood it's the capital of bad taste... and it's vulgar." The New Yorker speculated that she had quit her job because "her Her dresses weren't sensational enough. She made a lady look like a lady. Hollywood wants a lady who looks like two ladies". However, he continued to design for the cinema but this time for French films, including Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939), in which she appeared as La Maison Chanel. The designer, aware of the aspirations of the young Italian Luchino Visconti to work in cinema, she introduced him to Renoir, who was greatly impressed and hired him for his next film project.
His company had 4,000 employees and 28,000 annual sales units by 1935. As the decade wore on, his place of privilege in the world of haute couture came under threat. His designs for the industry of Hollywood cinema had failed and had not enhanced his reputation as he had hoped. Instead, a fierce rivalry began with renowned designer Elsa Schiaparelli, whose innovative designs were packed with festive and surreal details, garnering critical acclaim and buzz in the fashion world. Feeling that she was losing prestige, Chanel collaborated on the play Oedipe Rex by Jean Cocteau, with whom she had worked on Orphée (1926) and Antigone (1927, based on the homonymous tragedy by Sophocles). The costumes designed for Oedipe Rex were ridiculed and severely criticized by the press: "Wrapped in bandages, the actors looked like walking mummies or victims of some terrible accident."
World War II
In 1939, at the start of World War II, she closed all her stores but kept her boutique at 31 rue Cambon open with only perfumes and accessories available. She claimed that this was no time for fashion and 3,000 female employees lost their jobs. Upon closing the central fashion house, she publicly confessed her political position and details of her personal life began to circulate. Her dislike for Jews and homosexuals, reportedly instilled in her convent years and sharpened by her relationships with social elites, had cemented her beliefs. In fact, she shared with most of her entourage that the Jews were a Bolshevik threat to Europe. During the German occupation, Chanel resided at the Ritz Hotel, which was noted for being the preferred place of residence for German military officers. of high hierarchy. Her love affair with Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a German officer who had been a military intelligence operative since 1920, made it possible for her to stay at the Ritz Hotel.
Battle for control of "Parfum Chanel"
World War II, specifically the Nazi takeover of all Jewish property and business enterprises, gave her the chance to be the sole recipient of all the profits generated by her perfume company and best-selling product, Chanel N. 5. The directors of the company at the time, the Wertheimers, were Jewish, so Chanel used her status as "Aryan" to petition the German authorities to be the sole owner of the company. On May 5, 1941, he wrote to the government administrator charged with arranging the alienation of Jewish financial assets. Her reasons for taking over the company were that Parfums Chanel "continues to be owned by Jews" and had been legally "abandoned" by the owners. The designer wrote: "I have an indisputable right of priority... the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business... they are disproportionate... [and] you can help to partially solve the damages that I have suffered in the course of these 17 years".
During the post-World War II period, the business world followed with interest and some apprehension the ongoing legal fight for control of Parfums Chanel. The dressmaker had not realized that the Wertheimers, anticipating Nazi crackdowns on the Jews, had in May 1940 legally granted control of the company to Félix Amiot, a French Christian industrialist and businessman. After the war, Amiot handed control back to the Wertheimers. The parties involved in the legal proceedings were aware that the designer's wartime Nazi affiliation would seriously damage her reputation and the status of the Chanel brand if it were made. public.
Forbes magazine summed up the dilemma facing the Wertheimers: [It is a concern of Pierre W.] how a "legal fight could expose Chanel's wartime activities and ruin her image and his business". Finally, the procedural steps concluded with the making of a mutually agreed decision that included the renegotiation of the original contract of 1924. On May 17, 1947, the designer received profits from the sales of Chanel No. 5 in wartime, in a sum equivalent to US$400,000. From then on, her financial profit was enormous and her income was around US$25 million per year, making her one of the richest women in the world. In addition, Pierre Wertheimer agreed to an unusual arrangement proposed by Chanel herself in which she agreed to pay for all the designer's expenses—from the trivial to the most expensive—for the rest of her life.
Activity as a Nazi agent
Declassified archival documents discovered by Hal Vaughan revealed that the French Police Prefecture had a brief on Chanel in which she was described as: “Seamstress and perfumer. Pseudonym: Westminster. Reference Agent: F 7124. Flagged as a suspect in the file.” For Vaughan, “she was a facilitator. She knew everyone [...] And she helped the Nazis... Everything she did was a paradox. She was so contradictory. For one thing, she made anti-Semitic comments. However, one of his best clients was Jewish, like the Rothschilds, and in fact his business partner was Jewish, and continued to be Jewish after the war." Anti-Nazi activist Serge Klarsfeld stated that "it doesn't mean that because he has a spy number, is necessarily personally involved. Some informants had numbers without being aware of it." Vaughan established that Chanel was involved with the German cause as early as 1941 and worked for General Walter Schellenberg, head of SS intelligence, who coordinated her business relations with the German authorities. the occupation.
At the end of the war, Schellenberg was tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and sentenced to six years in prison for war crimes. He was released in 1951 due to an incurable liver disease and took refuge in Italy. The designer paid Schellenberg's medical and living expenses, supported financially by his wife and family, and financed his funeral in 1952.
Modelhout Operation
In 1943, Chanel traveled to Berlin with Dincklage to meet with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and formulate a strategy. In late 1943 or early 1944, she and her superior SS Schellenberg devised a plan to put pressure on Great Britain to end hostilities with Germany. Thanks to this, he obtained the release of his nephew, André Palasse, detained in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. British intelligence at the end of the war, Schellenberg maintained that Chanel was "a person who knew Winston Churchill well enough to carry out political negotiations with him". For this mission, dubbed Operation Modellhout, they recruited Vera Bate Lombardi in a new attempt to establish contact with London and negotiate a peace treaty before the entry of Russian troops into Berlin. Count Joseph von Ledebur-Wicheln, a Nazi agent who defected to the British Secret Service in 1944, r recalled a meeting she had with Dincklage in early 1943. Dincklage proposed an incentive to tempt her, informing von Ledebur that Chanel's participation in the operation would be assured if Lombardi were included in it: "The Abwehr had first to bring a young Italian [Lombardi] from France. Coco Chanel joined because of her lesbian vices... »
Unaware of the machinations of Schellenberg and her friend, Lombardi played their unknowing game as a victim and believed that the upcoming trip to Spain would be a business trip to explore the possibilities of establishing a headquarters for his couture house. in Madrid. Lombardi's role was to act as an intermediary and deliver a letter written by Chanel to Prime Minister Churchill sent through the British Embassy in Madrid. Ultimately the operation was a failure and British intelligence files revealed that everything was discovered when Lombardi at his arrival proceeded to denounce Chanel and the rest as Nazi spies.
Ward from persecution
In September 1944, Chanel was called in for questioning by a Purge Committee of the French Forces of the Interior. The committee, without any documented evidence of her activity as a contributor, was forced to release her after three hours. According to her great-niece, Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie, when the designer returned home she said: "Churchill would have released me." ». There is an unpublished interview dating from September 1944 in which Malcolm Muggeridge, later an intelligence agent for British MI6, interviewed her after her appearance before Free French investigators. Muggeridge pointedly questioned her about her wartime policies and activities, to which the designer said: "It's funny how my feelings have evolved. At first, his behaviors outraged me. Now, I practically feel sorry for those ruffians. One must refrain from contempt for the lowest exemplars of humanity... »
The extent to which Churchill intervened became the subject of gossipy speculation. Some claim that Churchill instructed Duff Cooper, British ambassador to the French provisional government, to protect the designer. Finally, pressured to testify in France before investigators in 1949, Chanel left her residence in Switzerland to face testimony given in against her at the war crimes trial of Baron Louis de Vaufreland, a French traitor and high-ranking German intelligence agent. She denied all accusations, and her friend and biographer Marcel Haedrich later offered an eloquent estimate of her collaboration with the Nazi regime: "If one were to take seriously the few revelations that Mademoiselle Chanel allowed herself to make about those dark years of the occupation, one's teeth would suffer from crooked teeth."
Controversy
Vaughan's disclosure of the contents of declassified military intelligence documents and subsequent controversy shortly after the publication of her book in August 2011 led the House of Chanel to issue a statement, part of which appeared on multiple media. The corporation "denied the claim" (of espionage) while admitting that "company officials had read only excerpts from the book." “The truth is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the war. It is clear that it was not the best time to have a love affair with a German even though Baron von Dincklage was English on his mother's side and she knew him before the war," the Chanel group said in a statement. The fashion house he also denied that the designer was anti-Semitic, posting that she would thus "have had no Jewish friends or ties to the Rothschild family of financiers if she had."
In an interview with the Associated Press, author Vaughan explained the path of his investigation: "I was looking for something else when I came across this document that said 'Chanel is a Nazi agent.' So I really started digging through all the archives, in the United States, in London, in Berlin and in Rome and I found not one, but 20, 30, 40 absolutely solid archival materials on Chanel and her lover, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, who was a professional spy for the Abwehr." Vaughan also referred to the discomfort caused by the revelations provided by his book: "A lot of people don't want the iconic figure of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, one of the great idols of France, be destroyed. This is definitely something that a lot of people would have preferred to put aside, forget..."
Career and post-war life
In 1945, he moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, although he finally returned to Paris in 1954. In 1953 he sold his villa "La Pausa" to Emery Reves and a partial replica of the house was built at the Dallas Museum of Art, which contains pieces of the original furniture and houses the Reves art collection. Unlike the pre-war period, in which the world of fashion was dominated only by women, this began to open up to new genres and the " New Look» by Christian Dior meant a worldwide success, followed by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Robert Piguet and Jacques Fath.
Chanel was convinced that female couturiers would rebel against the "illogical" aesthetic offered by male designers, further criticizing "girdles at the waist, padded bras, heavy skirts and stiff jackets". In her seventies and after an absence of fifteen, she felt it was time to re-enter the world of fashion. The re-establishment of her haute couture house in 1954 was financed by her old enemy Pierre Wertheimer. Her new collection she was not well received by Parisians who felt her reputation had been damaged by her involvement with the Nazis during the war. His new tweed suits and simple dresses, which echoed the streamlined styles of the pre-war years, were called "old-fashioned" by many European critics. However, his models had a high acceptance in the United Kingdom and the United States, where she forged new clients. Vogue magazine defined her as "the great revolutionary" and a "lonely fashion rebel". The actresses Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth were the first personalities to use her new models after her return to fashion.
In the 1950s, Chanel began working with goldsmith Robert Goossens, who produced some of the most significant jewelry of the designer's career, including pieces with imitation pearl or glass stone bases, rings and slopes. Goossens' work also includes braided silver and gold emerald pins, pendants and crystal Byzantine crosses. He continued to work with the House of Chanel even after the death of its founder, and many of his works were remade into fantasy format for fashion shows and presentations. On the other hand, the perfume maker Henri Robert collaborated with Coco Chanel between 1955 and 1974, a period in which he designed well-known fragrances such as Pour Monsieur, Chanel's first men's fragrance; Chanel No. 19, named in honor of Coco's birthday on August 19; and Cristalle Eau de Toilette.
In 1957, she received the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award from Stanley Marcus for the "Most Influential Designer of the Century" and in 1959 she was appointed a Fellow of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her style was again chosen to dress film stars such as Romy Schneider and Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's film Les Amants (1958), and Delphine Seyrig in Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais, as well as Maria Callas, Audrey Hepburn, and American First Lady Jackie Kennedy, who wore one of their outfits on the day of her husband John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Before the popularization of the miniskirt, created by Mary Quant in 1964, Chanel severely judged it through a statement in which she stated that the knees were the least beautiful part of the female body and therefore had to be kept covered. Quant pointed out that the knees were a symbol of youth and therefore had to be displayed without shame.
Senior year and his death
According to Edmonde Charles-Roux, she had become a tyrannical and very lonely person in her last years. She was occasionally frequented by Jacques Chazot, his confidante Lilou Marquand, and the Brazilian Aimée de Heeren, who spent four months in Paris a year, at the Hotel Meurice. The once rivals would often share happy memories of their time with the Duke of Westminster and walk together through the center of Paris.
At the beginning of 1971 she was ill and debilitated, afflicted with osteoarthritis and her addiction to morphine, but continued to work in her usual routine for the preparation of the spring catalogue. On the afternoon of Saturday, January 9, she took a long walk and upon returning home, she felt unwell and went to her room early. Chanel died the following day at the age of 87 as a result of a heart attack at the Hotel Ritz, where he had resided for over thirty years. His last words (according to legend) were: "Well, that's how one dies." A lonely death after a lonely life marked the end of the life of the myth. Her funeral was held at the Church of the Madeleine and her models took the front row at the ceremony. Her coffin was covered with white flowers (camellias, gardenias, orchids, azaleas) and some red roses. Her remains were buried in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Legacy
In 1915, the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar commented on her designs: "The woman who does not have at least one Chanel is hopelessly out of fashion... This season the Chanel's name is on the lips of all buyers." Her strong determination and character, as well as her good economic condition, led her to prevail over the opulent and rigid fashion of the beginning of the century XX and under his influence, aigrettes, long hair, hobble skirts, corsets went out of fashion and he established another simpler and more innovative style for women during World War I. Creator of the women's tailored suit, the French designer developed a simple elegance throughout her career and introduced black and white garments, chain belts, shirts white collar and cuffs, and costume jewelry. In the 1920s, she was considered the personification of of the "new woman" independent, sociable, recreational and individualistic. She directed the attention of her to the young audience and quickly became an icon of the flapper style.
Designers such as Paul Poiret and Mariano Fortuny introduced ethnic references into their haute couture creations during the 1900s and 1910s. Chanel continued this trend with Slavic designs throughout the 1920s. The lace and embroidery on her dresses in these times they were made exclusively by Kitmir, an embroidery house founded by the exiled Russian aristocrat, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, sister of Demetrius Romanov. Kitmir's fusion of oriental needlework with stylized folk motifs caught on. relief in his first collections. An evening dress of hers in 1922 was accompanied by a scarf on the neck or head. In addition to the scarf, her collections presented square necklines and long coats with belts alluding to the Russian mujik (peasants). All models were embroidered with brilliant crystals and inlaid with jet.
For the production of the Chanel suit, he introduced the use of knitted fabric, a knitted material made of wool, cotton or synthetic elements produced by the Rodier company, which originally produced this fabric for the exclusive manufacture of underwear. Her wool jersey suit, consisting of a cardigan jacket, pleated skirt, and paired with low-heeled pumps, became a darling of expensive women's fashion.
The camellia that she introduced as a decorative element in her costumes was closely related to the literary work of Alexandre Dumas, Lady with the Camellias, whose story had impressed the designer since her youth. The flower itself had become an identification symbol for the courtesan announcing her availability, the first appearance of it in a design of hers was in a black suit trimmed with white in 1933.
«Don't waste your time hitting the wall, hoping to turn it into a door» -Coco Chanel |
The term "little black dress" is often referred to as Chanel's contribution to the fashion lexicon and as an item of clothing that has been worn to this day. Her first garment was made of fine silk, crepe, and long-sleeved. In 1926, Vogue highlighted its design, and its editors predicted that it would become "a sort of uniform for all women of taste" by incorporating a standardized aesthetic that magazine compared it to the black Ford car in an obscure way. This look received widespread criticism from male journalists who complained: "No more bust, no more stomach, no more hip... Women's fashion at this time in the 20th century will be dubbed 'cut everything' 34;».
In 1933, designer Paul Iribe collaborated with Chanel to create extravagant pieces of jewelry commissioned by the Guild of Diamond Merchants. The all-diamond and platinum collection was publicly exhibited and drew a large audience of approximately 3,000 attendees in a one-month period. Obsessed with expensive jewelry, the designer turned the little-envied bijouterie fancy dress in coveted accessories and teamed up with Duke Fulco di Verdura to launch a line of jewelry. The white enameled bracelet with a Maltese cross and stones was her favorite and became an iconic signature piece for the Verdura-Chanel duo.
The original model of the Chanel bag was made of jersey or leather with a hand-stitched quilted exterior design influenced by the jackets worn by horsemen. The chain she wore was inspired by her orphanage years, where the abbey caretakers used waist chains to store keys. The red uniform of the convent is reflected inside the bag.
During his long leisure time in his youth, he used to sunbathe for long periods of time, making tans not only acceptable but also a symbol denoting a life of privilege and leisure. Historically, sun exposure it had been associated with unfortunate workers condemned to an endless day's work in the open while extremely white skin was a sure sign of the aristocracy. By the mid-1920s, under the influence of Chanel, women were seen in the beach without a hat to protect herself from the sun's rays. In addition, she was one of the promoters of the use of short hair as a sign of women's liberation and a new lifestyle. The phrase "A woman who cuts her hair is for changing her life" is attributed to Chanel.
Personality
Coco Chanel was an ambitious, hyperactive, intelligent woman, with business intuition, considered a person with a bad temper, demanding and a perfectionist in her trade. Many considered her a visionary and a born leader, on the other hand, others believed that she had a tendency to be calculating and opportunistic, reasons that led her to socialize with high society contacts in order to achieve advantages for her business; on the other hand, she was criticized for not taking any firm stance in times of political instability, and for knowing how to move within institutional changes so that her business did not disappear. Vaughan described her as a "consummate opportunist...she believed in nothing except fashion. She believed in nice clothes, in her business, and she didn't care about Hitler or the policies of Nazism". Justine Picardie said that “it was so contradictory. For one thing, she made anti-Semitic comments. However, one of his best clients was Jewish, like the Rothschilds, and in fact his partner in the business was Jewish, and continued to be so after the war." Today, this attitude has been found to be prevalent in the class business of the time, and even in American businessmen who became rich during World War II; however, the multiple enemies of Chanel are known and the antipathy that she aroused among the businessmen (men) of the time (although at the same time, they watched and copied her movements), as well as the conservative sectors, since she advocated a fashion that could be consumed by women with their own money, and freed the female body from the traditional corset, in addition to becoming a worldwide historical reference for the new generations. Until her appearance, it was unthinkable that a woman would be the world leader in women's fashion design since it was an activity, paradoxically, considered masculine, a trend that can continue to be appreciated in the world of fashion today.
Little is known about his relationships in the private sphere as he maintained discreet relationships. To this day, it is known that most of the information in this regard is false, some even linked her to men while both were in different space/time.
Mainly the leader characteristics that Chanel demonstrated most accentuated were the following:
He was a role model. Many are the women who later continued with her feminist attitude, imposing themselves on the world of men and throwing down sexist barriers of the time; In addition, to this day, Coco Chanel is one of the most imitated designers due to her great style and sobriety in her fashion and other designers of the stature of Karl Lagerfeld continue to go to her designs, in the that are usually inspired.
She became an advanced woman for her time, she knew herself and her abilities and weaknesses. For this reason, she strengthened her strengths and did not let herself be defeated in the face of adversity.
She was always open to learning and developing, so all her life she was an apprentice. She continually learned throughout her life from her.
Willingness to change. His life was a continuous coming and going of problematic situations. From the beginning of her life things were not easy for her and she had to learn to deal between the wars with buoyant economic situations with disastrous situations such as the crash of 1929. She worked immersed in change instead of resisting to the. Perhaps change will be the only constant in the future and the leader must accept as a challenge to work in continuous progress and learning.
He had a clear vision of everything he wanted to achieve and how far he could go, being aware of his limitations and impediments. He used his imagination, his own style and inspiration to create a great empire that today is one of the most prestigious fashion companies in the world.
She was a great communicator, being able to express her needs for the creation of the Chanel brand.
He always thought positively, being able to take advantage of all the possibilities that life offered him and to face the challenges that happened to him in life. She never stopped being enthusiastic and the phrase "When she left the boarding school she promised herself two things: that she would never depend on a man and that she would become rich.", proves it. He always maintained his composure in difficult situations and was confident in achieving his proposed objectives.
In popular culture
Film and TV adaptations
The first film about the designer was Lonely Chanel (1981), directed by George Kaczender and starring Marie-France Pisier, Timothy Dalton and Rutger Hauer.
The American television movie Coco Chanel aired on September 13, 2008 on Lifetime Television, starring Shirley MacLaine as Chanel at age 70. Directed by Christian Duguay, the film also starred Barbora Bobulova as young Chanel, Olivier Sitruk as Boy Capel, and Malcolm McDowell. The film substantially portrayed her early years in the convent, her romances with Balsan and Capel, her early years of professional career and his controversial return to fashion in 1954. However, he overlooked his collaboration in Nazi military operations during World War II.
Audrey Tautou, the face of Chanel SA since 2008, played the young Coco in a film titled Coco avant Chanel (Coco before Chanel), which was released on April 22, 2009.
The movie Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, directed by Jan Kounen and starring Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen, refers to the alleged romance between Chanel and the composer Igor Stravinsky. The film is based on the 2002 novel, Coco & Igor by Chris Greenhalgh, and was chosen to close the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2013, director Karl Lagerfeld cast Geraldine Chaplin as the designer in a thirty-minute short film entitled The Return, based on Chanel's return to the world of fashion in the 1980s. from 1950. The short film, in which Rupert Everett, Anna Mouglalis, Amanda Harlech and Kati Nescher also took part, was presented at the Dallas Fair Park on the occasion of the parade of the "Métiers d'Art" collection.
Literary representations
Coconut & Igor is a novel written by Chris Greenhalgh, chronicling the romance between Chanel and Igor Stravinsky and the creative achievements that arose from their romantic adventure. The novel was first published in 2003.
In 2007, a children's book titled Different like Coco was published, recounting Chanel's humble childhood and chronicling how she brought about breakthroughs in the fashion industry.
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman is a novel written by Karen Karbo and published in 2009, chronicling Chanel's humble beginnings and legendary achievements.
Theatrical works
The Broadway musical Coco, with music by André Previn, script and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, opened on December 18, 1969 and ended its season on October 3, 1970. Performed By Katharine Hepburn for the first eight months and by Danielle Darrieux for the remainder of the season, it recreated the moment Chanel reestablished its couture house in 1953-1954. At the time of its run, it was the most expensive show in Broadway history with a budget of $900,000.
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