Chanel And Her World Friends, Fashion, and Fame

Friends, Fashion, and Fame Edmonde Charles-Roux Years ago, when a bomb exploded in the Rue Cambon headquarters of Chanel, a group of Guadeloupe terrorists explained that they wanted to "strike at the heart of French prestige." And so they attacked not the Louvre, the Opera, or the Elysee Palace, but rather the famous mirror-lined salon of Gabrielle Chanel (1883-1971). Such is the image achieved by a woman who, born of the peasantry and raised in a convent orphanage, knew instinctively that the road to success lay in being absolutely at one with her own time. And what a time! The era of Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Visconti-all of whom "Coco" knew and collaborated with, even as she matched their modernist innovations by liberating women from the prison of 19th-century fashion and into a whole new concept of elegance: beauty of dress attained with the minimum of means and for a maximum of physical freedom. But if "Mademoiselle," as Chanel was reverentially known to her huge staff, became the most influential figure ever to work in fashion, literally inventing the look of the 20th century (as well as its fragrance), it helped that she was a classically beautiful woman who exuded a natural intelligence, wit, and sharp business and social sense. Chanel went everywhere and knew everyone, and as this richly illustrated volume clearly shows, Coco's life and accomplishment-even her chronic failure in love-constitute one of the great stories of the modern age. Chanel was one of France's authentic personalities, coolly spare and ordered in her taste but stubbornly individual in her aims and methods. At the height of the Belle Epoque, she stripped women of their corsets and feathers, bobbed their hair, put them in bathing suits, and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced slacks, costume jewelry, and the exquisitely comfortable suit that became her trademark. Early in the "Roaring Twenties," Chanel made the first couture perfume-No. 5-presenting it in the famous little square-cut flagon. It remains the most popular scent ever created. But, for all the success she knew in fashion and industry, Chanel led a life that may have been her greatest creation. Coco broke down the barriers erected by a highly stratified society, making herself the pacesetter for women's liberation before that particular label was even formulated. Never married, "Mademoiselle" lived openly with several men, including Grand Duke Dimitri, nephew of Tsar Alexander III, and the Duke of Westminster, "the richest man in England." Chanel glittered at the very center of the gilded world of Parisian art and society, where Cocteau reigned over the theatre and Comte Etienne de Beaumont over the ballroom. But the brilliant outer garment of Chanel's public life had a dark lining. Coco found little stability in any of her intimate relationships, and the loneliness this brought made her vulnerable to the charms of a German aristocrat who, unfortunately, was a Nazi agent in occupied Paris. Branded a "collaborationist," the aging Chanel found it prudent to spend the postwar years in Swiss exile. Then, fifteen years after she closed her salon in 1939, declaring the situation "no time for fashion," this woman of unerring instinct, now seventy-one years old, staged a comeback, triumphing over critics and addicts of the New Look. The definitive illustrated book on Chanel, this classic volume has been out-of-print for nearly twenty years. In this revised and updated edition, the glorious life of the incomparable Coco Chanel shines again with more than 600 illustrations from the extraordinary collection amassed over the years by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel's official biographer and close friend. Through the lively prose of Charles-Roux, the author's careful research and vivid eyewitness accounts set the pictures in their context of time and place.Charles-Roux, Edmonde is the author of 'Chanel And Her World Friends, Fashion, and Fame', published 0010 under ISBN 9780865651593 and ISBN 0865651590.