Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life Extract

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Coco Chane lthe Legend and the Life

J u s t i n e P i c a r d i e



An imprint o HarperCollins Publishers77–85 Fulham Palace RoadHammersmithLondon W6 8JBwww.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins in 2010This edition 2013

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© Justine Picardie 2010

Justine Picardie asserts the moral right to beidentifed as the author o this work

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‘Fashion, like landscape, is a state o mind,by which I mean my own.’

Coco Chanel



1

MademoiselleIs at Home

When my customers come to me, they like to cross the thresholdo some magic place; they eel a satis action that is perhaps a tracevulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters whoare incorporated into our legend. For them this is a ar greaterpleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecrationo ame.

Coco Chanel, 1935

T he House o Chanel stands at 31 Rue Cambon, a shrineto its dead creator, yet also a living, thriving temple

o twenty- irst-century ashion, the destination or pilgrims

who travel here rom all around the world. Outside, duskalls on a grey wintry a ternoon in Paris, the darkness andthe drizzle mingling into an early twilight, the shadows o the surrounding buildings lying heavy on the narrow street.Inside, the air is per umed and warm in the ground- loorboutique, a cocoon o luxury lined with cream sur aces and

silvered mirrors, the customers hovering like hummingbirdsabove glass cases o enticing jewel-coloured lipsticks, orswooping on rails o silk-lined tweed jackets. Their eyesdart towards the ilm projection o the latest collection,



2 COCO CHANEL

comparing what they see in the shop with what is portrayedon the screen (and perhaps in their mind’s eye, a vision o themselves trans ormed, dressed all in Chanel). You can

watch the video re lected in the mirrors, too; the porcelain-aced models riding on a white and gold carousel. But insteado wooden horses galloping in a ceaseless circle, there arethe amous symbols o Coco Chanel: pearls and camelliasand the interlocked double-C logo, as globally recognisableas the Stars and Stripes or the swastika. As the carousel

revolves on the screen, the re lections in the mirrors are alsospinning, and or a ew seconds everything is in movement;nothing seems solid at all.

This is as you would expect in the heart and headquarterso an international ashion brand, where mutability is integralto its business o selling new stock every season; yet there mustalways be something immediately amiliar, suggestive o aniconography that denotes heritage and enduring value. Thecontradictions o such an enterprise are unavoidable – it’s abalancing act between constant change and constancy – as isevident in Coco Chanel’s own observations on the businesso ashion: ‘A dress is neither a tragedy, nor a painting; itis a charming and ephemeral creation, not an everlasting

work o art. Fashion should die and die quickly, in order thatcommerce may survive … The more transient ashion is themore per ect it is. You can’t protect what is already dead.’

And yet Mademoiselle protected her house, and here itstill stands. Beside the entrance to the boutique is anotherdoorway, closed to the public by a discreet dark-suited

security guard, though not to select couture clients, whoascend Chanel’s mirrored staircase when they come orprivate ittings in the hushed salon on the irst loor. Nota trace o dust or dirt marks the loor, dark and shiny as



MA DEMOISEL LE IS AT HOME 3

a lipstick case, and the ivory walls are per ectly smooth,as be its a ceremonial space where pieces rom the currentcouture collection hang on rails, veiled in white shrouds

like novitiates. Beyond here, the staircase continues to risethrough the centre o the house, up to the place whereChanel watched her ashion shows un old, hidden rom theaudience below, yet seeing everything beneath her, perchedon the i th step rom the top o the spiralling stairs.

Pause or a moment on the staircase, and it gives you the

strangest sensation. The mirrors are simultaneously re lect-ing rom all angles; there is no escape rom the sight o yourbody bisected, slivers o ace and limbs. So you must watchyoursel as you climb the light to the second loor, to the un-marked mirrored double doors that lead into MademoiselleChanel’s private apartment. Open the door, and it is as i shehas never le t the building; or here is her sanctuary polishedand preserved, decades a ter her death on 10th January 1971.

You might call it a mausoleum, yet it eels too alive orthat, or these rooms are still illed with her presence, alongwith her possessions. On the other side o the door is anentrance hall, the walls lined with early eighteenth-centuryCoromandel screens, their red lacquer patterned with a

mysterious Oriental landscape, where women in kimonos lyon the back o white birds, and men are carried by ishes andturtles. There are pale mountains and wraiths o clouds andlakes on the screens, water alls and temples and precipices,a world beyond the walls o this Parisian apartment; and thesound o the city is silenced by the so tness o thick beige

carpet, the view concealed by the mirrors that re lect theChinese screens.The hall seems hermetically sealed, the way out hidden

by mirrors, but two li e-size Venetian blackamoors gesture



4 COCO CHANEL

to go on, past a pair o reindeer that stand to attentionon either side o a bunch o gilded wheat in a silver vase.The statues point into the salon, but the re lection o their

painted eyes and hands is multiplied in a series o mirroredimages, upending all sense o direction, skewing perspectivewithin these looking-glass walls. Another door leads romthe hall to the dining room where Chanel entertainedguests, six beige suede-upholstered chairs at a walnut table;two lions on the tabletop; two gilt and crystal-encrusted

mirrors in the alcoves; the ceiling curved like the vaultingo a Romanesque church. A smaller sitting room is linedwith more antique Chinese screens, watched over by a stonestatue o the Madonna and Child, his eyes at the door, herscast down to the ground. But there is no bedroom in theapartment, or Mademoiselle slept across the street, on thetop loor o the Ritz, with a view over the roo tops o RueCambon. Her hotel room was unadorned – white cottonsheets, white walls, austere like the convent orphanagewhere she was educated – but her apartment remains asornate as it was in her li etime. The walls are lined in goldabric; not that much can be seen o them, or they arecovered with books and screens and mirrors, conserved like

the inside o a holy sanctum, or the inal resting place o anAncient Egyptian queen.

I the mirrored staircase is the backbone o the Houseo Chanel, then Mademoiselle’s salon – the largest o thethree main rooms in her apartment – is its hidden heart. Theoutside world is not entirely excluded, or there are windows

reaching rom loor to ceiling, overlooking Rue Cambon tothe school on the other side o the street, where childrenstill study in the irst- loor classroom, just as they did whenMademoiselle Chanel lived here. But did she look out o




the window at them, or keep her eyes ixed on the treasureswithin these walls? There are yet more Chinese screens hidingthe doors (Chanel hated the sight o doors, she said, or

they reminded her o those who had already le t, and thosewho would leave her again). Look closer, and you could loseyoursel within their intricacies, drawn into a landscape o boats and bridges, o grace ul women kneeling beside thewater; a place where serpents and dragons ly through theair, above unicorns and elephants; where the trees grow leaves

like ine white lace, and camellias are perpetually in blossom.You could spend days in this room and never want toleave, such is the wealth o its riches. Two walls are linedwith leather-bound books: antique editions o Plutarch,Euripides and Homer; the memoirs o Casanova and theessays o Montaigne; The Confessions of St Augustine andThe Dialogues o Plato; the complete works o Maupassantand Molière in French, Shelley and Shakespeare in English;and two volumes o a weighty Holy Bible, published inLondon by the aptly named Virtue and Co. (I you happento take down Volume Three o Shelley rom the shel , italls open at a well-thumbed page rom the poet’s pre aceto Julian and Maddalo : ‘O the Maniac I can give no

in ormation. He seems, by his own account, to have beendisappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated andamiable person when in his right senses. His story, told atlength, might be like many other stories o the same kind:the unconnected exclamations o his agony will perhaps beound a su icient comment or the text o every heart.’)

In ront o one o these walls o rare books standsMademoiselle’s roll-top desk, where her cream-colouredwriting paper and envelopes are still in the compartmentwhere she kept them. Above is a gilt- ramed painting



6 COCO CHANEL

o a lion, signi ying Chanel’s astrological sign o Leo, incommemoration o her birthday on 19th August, althoughshe was less willing to remember the year o her birth, 1883,

adjusting it when it suited her purposes; even tearing it outo her passport. ‘My age varies according to the days andthe people I happen to be with,’ she told a young Americanjournalist in 1959, when she was 76. ‘When I’m bored I eelvery old, and since I’m extremely bored with you, I’m goingto be a thousand years old in ive minutes …’ Beside the

lion is a vase o crystal camellias; on the leather desktopis her tortoiseshell an, engraved with the stars that sheconstantly reworked into her jewellery designs, and a pairo her spectacles. Try them on, and the room dissolves intoa blur o gold and red and shadows; quickly take them o again, to stop the walls rom closing in.

The drawers o the desk are unlocked; two are empty – and much was emptied rom here, mysteriously vanishingon the night o Mademoiselle’s death; shadowy iguresstealing down the mirrored staircase, disappearing withbags o her belongings, including most o her precious jewels(the priceless ropes o pearls and necklaces o rubies andemeralds, her dazzling diamond rings and bracelets). But

the right-hand drawer still contains a ew o her personalpossessions: a pair o sunglasses in a so t leather pouch,another an, this one even more delicate, ashioned in paperand ragile wooden rets, and a shea o photographs o Mademoiselle Chanel. The irst is o her in 1937, elegant ina white jacket and pearls, standing beside the Coromandel

screen in the hall. Her eyes do not look into the camera lens,but gaze sideways, towards something or someone unseen,somewhere beyond the screen, beyond the white birdsand camellias.





8 COCO CHANEL

owner’s enigmatic ace. There are bunches o dried wheat oneither side o the marble ireplace, and two more made o gilded wood on the mantelpiece, emblematic o good ortune

and prosperity. A golden lion raises its paw to a Grecianmask, a woman’s ace with eyes as dark as Chanel’s; and inthe centre o the mantelpiece is a irst-century headless torsoo Aphrodite, its marble curves re lected in the looking glass,so that it seems to be one o twins. The Baroque mirrorabove the ireplace is vast, reaching the high ceiling, ramed

by pillars o cherubs and grapes. Its re lections are re ractedby yet another mirror, o darker, smokier glass, which hangsabove the suede so a; leaning against the aded gilt rame isa gold cruci ix (a double-barred cross, typical o those seenin the Spanish holy town o Caravaca, a ormer strongholdo the Knights Templar). Beside the cross is a painting o asingle wheatshea by Salvador Dalí, one o Chanel’s manyartist riends and lovers.

You could go on searching or meaning here, noting thequilted cushions on the so a (diagonal quilting, the samepattern as her amous handbags); hunting or the lions inthe room; counting the pairs o animals. There are the twobronze deer by the ireplace, almost li e-size, a buck and

doe, their cloven eet sinking into the carpet, and anothertiny pair beside the so a, in painted metal, with vases o pink lowers on their backs. Two camels on a side-table,two rogs (one glass, one bronze); two lovebirds madeo pearl in a tiny jewelled cage; two porcelain horses, oneither side o the smoky mirror; two golden ire-dogs in

the empty hearth. Once you start looking, the doublingsare everywhere: a second Grecian mask, staring at its twinrom across the room; two Egyptian sphinx; two ceramicbowls on top o a bookshel , one containing a broken shard




o crystal; two clocks, one on the desk, which has stoppedat 3.23, on the eleventh day o an unnumbered month, theother suspended, miraculously, on a mirrored wall between

the two windows, its hands motionless at 1.18, a wingedand venge ul angel o death wielding a scythe above theclock ace.

A collection o symbolic objects is scattered throughoutthe room: a Catholic icon, a Buddha holding a spray o roses in his hand, another Buddha beside a strange mythical

creature (part lion, part dog, part man, with an expressionon his ace o a sorrow ul Caliban); a crystal glass cross, amariner’s navigational tool, a single bronze hand made byDiego Giacometti; a pack o Tarot cards (the number iveis on top, Chanel’s lucky number, illustrated by a pictureo a green tree, its roots visible above the ground). There isevidence o great wealth, and perhaps o great love: Chanelis said to have discovered her taste or Coromandel screenswith the irst and oremost love o her li e, Boy Capel, theEnglishman who also introduced her to theosophy andliterature. Then there are the weighty solid-gold boxesengraved with the crest o a crown, a gi t to Chanel rom theDuke o Westminster, who showered her with jewels during

their decade-long love a air, although there is no urther signo him here in the apartment apart rom a novel by AlexandreDumas, borrowed rom the ducal library. The boxes standempty on a low table in ront o the so a, lanked by a pairo ortune-teller’s glass globes: one is in white quartz, coolto the touch; the other o gold- lecked resin, unexpectedly

warm beneath the hands. Gaze into the glass, and nothingis clear; both globes contain only the aintest re lections o the chandelier that hangs rom the middle o the ceiling.It is a magni icent creation – designed by Chanel hersel –



1 0 COCO CHANEL

adorned with dozens o crystal orbs and stars, camellias andgrapes; sparkling rom a black wrought-iron rame. Looklong enough, and the hidden letters and numbers in the

rame begin to emerge rom the abstract pattern: at the topo the chandelier there are Gs or Gabrielle, Chanel’s nameat christening; double Cs or Coco Chanel, the name underwhich she became amous; and ives – the number whichmade her ortune, as the label on the per ume that still sellsmore than any other brand in the world.

Walk back to the desk, and dare to sit down on the beigesuede-upholstered chair where Mademoiselle used to work;run your ingers over the marks o her pen still visible inthe multiple scores and angry scratches on the ink-stainedleather desktop. The hands o the clocks are ixed or ever,the room is silent, the cream linen curtains are still; nothingmoves across the mirrors, the gleaming light rom thechandelier remains caught in time, as i preserved in amber.You cannot see the re lections in the mirrors when you arewriting at the desk, only the eyes o the painted lion in thegold rame, the hands o the blackamoors, disappearingthrough the hal -open door; but the hairs on the back o your neck are prickling; and perhaps, i you could turn

around quickly enough, who on earth might be re lected inthe looking-glass walls?

‘Sometimes, when the boutique is closed, we eel herpresence,’ said my guide to the apartment, on my irst visithere, glancing over her shoulder at the sound o a creakingdoor, the murmur o voices on the staircase, nervous as i

she were being watched. ‘A ter dark, even when the lightsare on, you might glimpse her in the mirror, or hear herootsteps in the drawing room, very so t and quiet, tooquick or anyone to catch up with her …’



1 1

Gabrielle

T hose on whom legends are built are their legends,’declared Coco Chanel to her riend Paul Morand,

one o several writers to whom she tried, and ailed, totell the story o her li e. ‘People’s lives are an enigma,’ shesaid to another riend, Claude Delay, not long be ore herdeath, when her ace had already become a ixed mask tothe world, and her myth apparently impenetrable. Delaywas a young woman at the time, the daughter o a well-known French psychiatrist, but is hersel now an eminentpsychoanalyst, and an expert guide to the labyrinth o secrets and lies that Chanel constructed to conceal thetruth o her past. Not that there is ever a single truthin a li e, especially or a woman who built a career onre ashioning women’s ideas o themselves; which may bewhy Chanel recounted so many di erent stories about

hersel , as i in each version something new might emergeout o her history.

‘I don’t like the amily,’ she told Delay, in one o a serieso revelatory, rambling conversations in her inal decade.‘You’re born in it, not o it. I don’t know anything moreterri ying than the amily.’ And so she circled around and

about it, telling and retelling the narrative o her youth,remaking history just as she remade the sleeves o a jacket,un astening its seams and cutting its threads, and thensewing it back together again. ‘Childhood – you speak o

‘



1 2 COCO CHAN EL

it when you’re very tired, because it’s a time when you hadhopes, expectations. I remember my childhood by heart.’

I Chanel’s memory did survive intact, she nevertheless

obscured her past rom others, reshaping its heartaches,smoothing away the rough edges. Even her birth certi icateis misleading – her ather’s surname, and hers, were misspeltdue to a clerical error as Chasnel. But she could not keep allthe details hidden: her mother’s maiden name was Eugénie

Jeanne Dévolles, and despite attempts by Chanel in later

li e to erase the date, the o icial record shows that hermother gave birth to Gabrielle on 19th August 1883 in thepoorhouse in Saumur, a market town on the river Loire.Eugénie (known as Jeanne) was 20, Henri-Albert (knownas Albert) was 28, and listed as a marchand , or merchant,on Gabrielle’s birth certi icate. They were not yet marriedbut already had one daughter, Julia, born less than a yearpreviously, on 11th September 1882.

‘I was born on a journey,’ Chanel told an Americanreporter in answer to his question about the exact locationo her birthplace. Although this was an evasion – she wasborn in a hospice or the poor, run by an order o nuns,the Sisters o Providence – her parents were generally on

the move, itinerant market traders selling buttons andbonnets, aprons and overalls, travelling between towns, justas her paternal grandparents had done. Gabrielle’s atherwas the son o a peddler, and like her, he had been bornin a poorhouse (in Nîmes in 1856); his surname had alsobeen misspelt on his birth certi icate, but on this occasion

as Henri-Albert Charnet. The mistake was not correctedin o icial records until over two decades later, in 1878,when a court decree stated that Charnet be replaced onthe certi icate by Chanel, ‘which is the true name’.



GABRIELLE 1 3

‘My ather was not there,’ she explained to anotherjournalist, Marcel Haedrich (editor-in-chie o MarieClaire , and a man who had spent enough time with Chanel

to regard himsel as her riend, drawing on his conversationswith her in a biography he wrote soon a ter her death). ‘Thatpoor woman, my mother, had to go looking or him. It’s asad story, and very boring – I’ve heard it so many times.’

Thus she dismissed the beginning o her story, and nevertold it with any accuracy hersel ; never acknowledging that

the truth was ar rom boring, but too troubling to reveal.Gabrielle’s ather was not present at her birth, setting apattern that was to be repeated therea ter. A man who o tenappeared to be on the run rom his amily, he had alreadyvanished when Jeanne became pregnant with their irstchild, and re used to marry her when he was inally trackeddown, a month be ore she gave birth to their daughter Julia.Consequently, both the girls were born illegitimate; it wasnot until Gabrielle was 15 months old that her parentseventually married, in November 1884. Soon a terwards, hermother was pregnant again, and on the move through theAuvergne in south-central France, an isolated region where

Jeanne had been born into a peasant amily in the village

o Courpière. She would have ound little re uge there: both Jeanne’s parents were dead by the time she had met herelusive uture husband, and although her brother had donehis best to protect her interests when she ell pregnant, herillegitimate babies did nothing to so ten the weight o localdisapproval. A boy, christened Alphonse, was born in 1885;

another daughter, Antoinette, in 1887; a son, Lucien, in 1889;and the inal baby, Augustin, who died in in ancy, in 1891.Chanel rarely talked about the circumstances o her

birth, but she did occasionally mention a train journey that



14 COCO CHANEL

her mother had undertaken just be orehand, in search o the elusive Albert. ‘What with the clothes o that time,’she remarked to Haedrich with her customary, circuitous

vagueness, ‘I suppose no one could see that she was aboutto have a baby. Some people helped her – they were verykind: they took her into their home and sent or a doctor.My mother didn’t want to stay there.

‘“You can get another train tomorrow,” the people said,to soothe her. “You’ll ind your husband tomorrow.” But

the doctor realised that my mother wasn’t ill at all. “She’sabout to have a baby,” he said. At that point the peoplewho had been so nice to her were urious. They wanted tothrow her out. The doctor insisted that they take care o her. They took her to a hospital, where I was born. One o the hospital nuns was my godmother.’

The name o this nun was Gabrielle Bonheur, accordingto Chanel, ‘so I was baptised Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel.I knew nothing o this or a long time. There was neverany occasion to check my baptismal certi icate. During thewar I sent or all my documents because one was alwaysa raid o the worst …’ In act, the name Bonheur does notappear on her baptismal certi icate, but perhaps Gabrielle

elt the right to make it her own in later li e; to lay claim toits meaning, which is happiness.

In yet another version o her birth, told to a di erentriend, André-Louis Dubois, Gabrielle mentioned a trainagain, suggesting that her mother went into labour whiletravelling on the railway. ‘She talked constantly about

trains, sometimes even claiming to have been born ona train,’ said Dubois, remembering Chanel to a Frenchjournalist soon a ter her death. ‘Why this obsession withtrains?’ One possible answer is that she had an uncle who



GABRIELLE 1 5

was a railway employee, but even so, trains seemed to havea deeper signi icance or Chanel than that; as i they werea connection to a past that was always on the move, yet ran

along ixed lines, to a destination o her own choosing.Whatever her association with train travel, she was also

a child o the poorhouse, plain Gabrielle Chasnel. AndGabrielle she stayed throughout her childhood – Coco wasa creation that came later – although she invented a storythat is revealing in its untruths: ‘My ather used to call me

“Little Coco” until something better should come along,’she told Haedrich. ‘He didn’t like [the name] “Gabrielle”at all; it hadn’t been his choice. And he was right. Soon the“Little” dri ted away and I was simply Coco.’ Or might it bethat her ather was complaining that he didn’t like Gabriellehersel ; that he had not chosen to have children; or soonhe le t them, discontented with marriage and atherhood,always on the lookout or something better.

At times, Gabrielle declared Coco to be an ‘aw ul’ name;and yet she was proud o its recognition throughout theworld, evidence o her indisputable presence, despite thelack o acknowledgement or recognition by her ather. Butstill it was a cipher, a name that her ather had never known,

even though she declared otherwise. ‘I anyone had told mebe ore the war that I’d be Coco Chanel to the whole world,I’d have laughed,’ she said to Haedrich. ‘MademoiselleChanel had our thousand employees and the richest man inEngland loved her. And now I’m Coco Chanel! Nevertheless,it isn’t my name … People stop me in the street: “Are you

really Coco Chanel?” When I give autographs, I write “CocoChanel”. On a train to Lausanne a couple o weeks ago, thewhole carriage paraded past me. In my own premises I’mcalled “Mademoiselle”; that goes without saying. I certainly



16 COCO CHANEL

don’t want to be called Coco in the House o Chanel.’(These seemingly disconnected sentences are as Haedrichtranscribed them; the leeting re erences to her name and the

train exactly as he recorded them.)In truth, no one knew or certain what name Gabrielle

answered to in childhood, nor where exactly Coco camerom. In old age, Chanel told Claude Delay that her atherspoke English – ‘that was considered something diabolicalin the provinces’ – which seems highly unlikely, but it is

possible that the story ormed a link in her mind with theEnglish-speaking men that she loved in adulthood (BoyCapel and the Duke o Westminster, both o whom wereto prove un aith ul to her). She also told Delay that herather gave her a present when he returned rom one o hisnumerous trips away: a penholder made o a knucklebone,with Notre-Dame depicted on one side, and the Ei elTower on the other; and that she had dug a hole or thisdecorated bone in a cemetery, and buried the gi t, as ano ering to the dead.

I Chanel’s own account is to be believed, by the ageo six she was spending as much time as possible in agraveyard. ‘Every child has a special place, where he or she

likes to hide, play and dream,’ she said to Paul Morand(who set down her memories in his evocative book, L’Allurede Chanel ). ‘Mine was an Auvergne cemetery. I knew noone there, not even the dead.’ And yet the dead seemed tobecome alive or her there, although they remained as silentas their graves. ‘I was the queen o this secret garden. I loved

its subterranean dwellers. “The dead are not dead as longas we think o them,” I would tell mysel .’She became attached to two unnamed tombstones,

decorating them with wild lowers – poppies and daisies



GABRIELLE 1 7

and corn lowers – bringing her rag dolls to the cemetery;her avourite dolls, because she had made them or hersel .‘I wanted to be sure that I was loved,’ she told Morand,

‘but I lived with people who showed no pity. I like talking tomysel and I don’t listen to what I’m told: this is probablydue to the act that the irst people to whom I opened myheart were the dead.’

Her mother igures only as a shadowy invalid inGabrielle’s memories; though there are a ew splashes o

crimson that stain the blank pages within Chanel’s shi tingnarratives – her stories o the blood that a sick womancoughed onto white handkerchie s, and an interior whichbears some resemblance to the sinister red room where JaneEyre was incarcerated as a child. Chanel, in later li e, wasa an o the Brontës, returning repeatedly to Jane Eyre andWuthering Heights (stories o near incestuous passion, o locked doors and unhinged minds). But her description o the red room is also reminiscent o another nineteenth-century novel, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte PerkinsGilman, in which a woman goes mad a ter the birth o herchild, and peels the paper rom the walls o the room thatimprisons her. In Chanel’s story (as told to Paul Morand),

the wallpaper was red. She was ive, and her mother alreadyvery ill, when she was taken with her two sisters to stayat the home o an elderly uncle. ‘We were shut away in aroom covered in red wallpaper. To begin with, we were verywell-behaved; then we noticed that the red wallpaper wasvery damp and could be peeled o rom the walls.’ The girls

started by peeling small pieces, then climbed onto chairs,and stripped the entire room down to its bare pink plaster:‘the pleasure was sublime!’ When their mother came intothe room, she was silent, saying nothing to her daughters,





ell asleep on her ather’s shoulder, and the next day hebought her a blue dress.

In another o her con essions to Delay (narratives in

which the truth may or may not be unravelled rom theictions), Chanel said that as a child she was rightened o ghosts and what lay hidden beneath the bed in the darkness.Gabrielle’s graveyard o erings were not enough to protecther, and in the night the dead seemed more sinister thanthey did in her daylight games at the cemetery. But in the

story as she told it – one o a series that could have beendesigned more or hersel than or her listener – her athercame to her; he was there to soothe her ears. ‘Don’t berightened,’ he said to her, as every good ather should. ‘Noone is going to hurt you.’ Even so, she was still terri ied o a man under her bed, throwing wheat at her. ‘But wheat isvery good,’ her ather said, taking her into his arms. Eversince then, she explained to Delay, she had always kept abunch o wheat close to her: in her bedroom at the Ritz, andin each room o her apartment in Rue Cambon.

Yet all the goodness o the wheat could not keep hermother rom dying. Gabrielle maintained that she was6 years old at the time; in reality, she was 11. Her ather

was absent again, travelling away rom home, when Jeannewas ound dead in her bed in a reezing room in Brive, ona bitterly cold February morning in 1895. History does notrelate i Gabrielle watched her mother die, or or how longshe and her siblings remained alone with the corpse; andMademoiselle Chanel never revealed the truth, either.

Documents

Coco Chanel: The Legend and The Life Extract