The Allure of Chanel

ARRIVAL IN PARIS

THE NAME OF THE HANDSOME ENGLISHMAN was Boy Capel. He didn’t know what to do with me either. He took me to Paris and set me up in a hotel. Young M B, who was very distressed, was packed off to Argentina by his family.

M B and Capel had taken pity on me; they thought of me as a poor, abandoned sparrow; in actual fact, I was a monster. I gradually learnt about life, I mean how to cope with it. I was highly intelligent, far more intelligent than I am now. I was unlike anyone else, either physically or mentally. I liked solitude; instinctively I loved what was beautiful and loathed prettiness. I always told the truth. I was very opinionated for my age. I could tell what was fake, conventional or bad. Paris made me feel dreadfully frightened. I didn’t go out. I knew nothing about the world. I was unaware of social nuances, of family histories, the scandals, the allusions, all the things that Paris knew about and which are not written down anywhere, and since I was much too proud to ask questions, I remained in ignorance.

Boy Capel, a highly cultured man and an eccentric character, eventually came to understand me very well.

“She looks frivolous,” he would say, “but she isn’t.”

He didn’t want me to have friends. He added:

“They would damage you.”

He is the only man I have loved. He is dead. I have never forgotten him. He was the great stroke of luck in my life; I had met a human being who did not demoralise me. He had a very strong and unusual character, and he was a passionate and single-minded sort of man; he shaped me, he knew how to develop what was unique in me, at the cost of everything else. At the age of thirty, at a time when young men fritter away their wealth, Boy Capel had already made his fortune in coal transportation. He owned a stable of polo ponies. He was one of the lions of London society. For me he was my father, my brother, my entire family. When war came, he knew how to win over old Clemenceau, who thought the world of him. His manners were refined, his social success was dazzling. He was only happy in the company of the little brute from the provinces, the unruly child who had followed him. We never went out together (at that time, Paris still had principles). We would delay the delights of advertising our love until later, when we were married. One day, however, on a whim, I insisted that Boy Capel should put off attending an important gala at the Casino in Deauville and dine there alone with me. All eyes were on us: my timid entrance, my awkwardness which contrasted with a wonderfully simple white dress, attracted people’s attention. The beauties of the period, with that intuition women have for threats unknown, were alarmed; they forgot their lords and their maharajahs; Boy’s place at their table remained empty. Pauline de Laborde and Marthe Letellier could not take their eyes off me. One of the elegant celebrities recalling that dinner to me, which I had forgotten, many years later, commented: “That evening you gave me one of the greatest shocks of my life.” “How well I understand Boy deserting us for her,” said an Englishwoman at that dinner party; her objectivity merely poured oil on the fire.

My success dates from that evening; to begin with it was an English success. I have always succeeded with the English, I don’t know why. Relationships between England and France have been through many trials, but my English friends have always remained loyal to me. One of them confessed to me, not long ago: “Since I’ve known you, I’ve come to like France again.”

Boy Capel’s beautiful girlfriends would say to him angrily: “Drop that woman.” Not being in the least jealous, I pushed him into their arms; this baffled them and they kept on repeating: “Drop that woman”. He replied in that utterly natural way he had, one that astonished people in an age of poseurs: “No. You might as well ask me to chop off a leg.” He needed me.

M B returned from Argentina. He brought me some lemons, rotten ones what’s more, in a bag.

“How are you getting on with your Englishman?”

“I’m getting on … as men and women do.”

“That’s perfect. Continue.”

This simple bit of dialogue conveys badly what was an extremely complicated situation. Today everything is easy. Speed governs affairs of the heart, as it does everything else. But before the situation was resolved, there were tears and quarrels. Boy was English, he didn’t understand; everything became muddled. He was very moral. I distanced him from his friends, who loathed me. They lived with tarts. Boy hid me away; he wouldn’t allow me to go around with them. I asked him why.

“The girls are so pretty,” I said.

“Yes, but nothing else.”

“Why do they never come to the house?”

“Because … you’re not one of them, you’re not like anyone else. And then because, when we are married …”

‘Me, I’m not pretty …”

“Of course you’re not pretty, but I have nothing more beautiful than you.”

Our house was full of flowers, but beneath the luxurious surroundings Boy Capel maintained a strict outlook, in keeping with his moral character, which was that of the well-brought-up Englishman. In educating me, he did not spare me; he commented on my conduct: “You behaved badly … you lied … you were wrong.” He had that gently authoritative manner of men who know women well, and who love them implicitly.

One day, I said to Boy Capel:

“I’m going to work. I want to make hats.”

“Fine. You’ll do very well. You’ll get though a lot of money, but that doesn’t matter, you need to keep busy, it’s an excellent idea. The most important thing is that you’re happy.”

The women I saw at the races wore enormous loaves on their heads, constructions made of feathers and improved with fruits and plumes; but worst of all, which appalled me, their hats did not fit on their heads. (I have mentioned that I wore mine pulled down over the ears.)

I rented rooms on the first floor of a building in the rue Cambon. I still have it. On the door, it read: ‘Chanel, modes’. Capel put an excellent woman at my disposal, Madame Aubert, whose real name was Mademoiselle de Saint-Pons. She advised me and guided me. In the grandstands, people began talking about my amazing, unusual hats, so neat and austere, which were somehow a foretaste of the iron age that was to come, but which had not yet dawned. Customers came, initially prompted by curiosity. One day I had a visit from one such woman, who admitted quite openly:

“I came … to have a look at you.”

I was the curious creature, the little woman whose straw boater fitted her head, and whose head fitted her shoulders.

The more people came to call on me, the more I hid away. This habit has always remained with me. I never appeared at shows. One had to make conversation, which terrified me. And I didn’t know how to sell; I’ve never known how to sell. When a customer insisted on seeing me, I went and hid in a cupboard.

“You go, Angèle.”

“But it’s you they want to see, Mademoiselle.”

I wanted the earth to swallow me up. I thought that everybody was very intelligent and that I was stupid.

“But where is this little woman I’ve heard so much about?” the customer persisted.

“Do come, Mademoiselle!” begged Angèle.

“I can’t. If they find the hat’s too expensive, I feel I might give it away.”

I had a premonition of this axiom, observed a thousand times since: “Every customer seen is a customer lost”. If somebody encountered me accidentally in the shop, then I spoke, I prattled away, out of shyness; escaping through chit-chat: how many windbags, mocked for their self-assurance, are simply quiet people who, deep down, are frightened of silence.

I was extremely naive. I didn’t begin to imagine that I was of interest to people; I didn’t realise that it was me they were looking at. I thought of myself merely as a country girl, like so many others. The age of extravagant dresses, those dresses worn by heroines that I had dreamt about, was past. I had never even had those convent uniforms, with capes, adorned with pale blue Holy Ghost, or Children of Mary, ribbons, which are a child’s pride and joy; I no longer thought about lace; I knew that extravagant things didn’t suit me. All I kept were my goat-skin coat and my simple outfits.

“Since you are so attached to them,” Capel said to me, “I’m going to get you to have the clothes you have always worn remade elegantly, by an English tailor.”

Everything to do with rue Cambon stemmed from there.

Boy Capel had given me the wherewithal to have fun; I had so much fun that I forgot about love. In reality, he wanted to give me all the joie de vivre that he would forego.

“Tell me who you’re sleeping with, it would amuse me greatly,” I would say to him. (I don’t know what word I used at the time, but not ‘sleep’. In 1913 people didn’t say that.)

He laughed:

“Do you think that makes my life easy? It complicates it. But then (and you don’t appear to have any doubt about it), you’re a woman.”