The Allure of Chanel

1922

I’VE KNOWN MANY CELEBRITIES, those on the wane and those up and coming. If I speak of them, it is not so as to hitch my wagon to their train, but because I have preferred their company to all others. And because those who have come to know me, even when we have been acquaintances for twenty years, make me laugh.

After my days spent working in the rue Cambon, interrupted by a hurried tea at Fleurs, in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, I didn’t much feel like going out. Yet Paris, at that time, was experiencing its strangest and most brilliant years. London and New York (I’m not talking about Berlin, which was buckling then under the throes of devaluation, hunger and expressionism) had their eyes trained on us. From the rue Cambon to Montparnasse, I watched as the Faubourg Saint-Germain attuned itself, princesses opened tea shops that bore the names of well-known books, the White Russians landed, and Europe patched things up for one last time as best it could. The Philippe Berthelots threw their final glittering party: after his reconciliation with the Tiger,9 at the end of the Peace Conference, Philippe, in spite of Poincaré, was very much back in good favour; this had ceased under Millerand, but it was still the case, nonetheless; supported by Bailby, by his brother André, by Bader, Léon Blum, Misia, and by his old friends, he still continued to be something of the force he had been under Briand, during the first two years of the war.

I still remember a delightful Christmas Eve party at rue Cambon. Cocteau had brought along ‘les Six’. The young group of student musicians, led by Satie, was at the height of the fame it enjoyed in the early days of Le Boeuf sur le toit. Poulenc had just discarded his soldier’s uniform, Auric was in love with Irène Lagut, Honegger and Darius Milhaud, who was not yet a family man, already had, as they say, a good ‘grounding’ behind them, even though Milhaud was not yet the Saint-Saëns of that generation. There were thirty or so of us: Germaine Taillefer, looking cool and beautiful, Jane Bathori, Ricardo Vinès, Stravinsky, Morand, Segonzac, Sert, Misia, Godebski and the Philippe Berthelots. Fargue arrived, ushering in Ravel; Philippe, his high, curly-haired forehead motionless, was threatening to recite La Légende des siècles, Cocteau had brought along his jazz music from Gaya’s, Segonzac was doing imitations of peasants, and Hélène Berthelot, in a Chinese silk dress, looked as if she was at the foyer of the Oeuvre theatre. Satie was talking to me about a ballet. He suddenly stopped speaking, for Misia, with her brioche on her head, looking anxious and sniffing some dark intrigue, was approaching his chair. Satie, his hand covering his twisted mouth and his goatee beard, his pince-nez dangling, whispered to me:

“Here comes the cat, let’s hide our birds …”

Cocteau was describing how he had been at the Lycée Condorcet with Mistinguett’s son, “nowadays a doctor with a large beard, who lives in Brazil”.

9 Georges Clemenceau’s nickname [Tr]