Mademoiselle Chanel (12 page)

His own fury, rare to kindle but implacable once lit, darkened his eyes. “You insult me. What’s worse, you insult us. You cannot run a business properly? Fine, you don’t have to. Hire an accountant. Do what you do best and leave the numbers to those who know how. But don’t ever tell me again that I will snatch anything from you. I will not stand for it.”

I went limp, suddenly feeling the sodden weight of my clothes, the chill of the rain. I averted my face. “I’m not saying that.”

“Yes, you are. I told you, I am not Balsan. What I give you now, you will repay. I know you will. What I want is for you to know it. To
believe
it. It doesn’t matter how much I must invest if you’ll only trust in your talent and tell me the truth.”

I bit down on my quivering lip. “I will repay it. Every last centime.”

“So I hope.” He gave me a pensive look. “You’re the proudest person I know, but remember, you are still only a woman. And though I love you for it, pride will make you suffer.”

Only a woman
. . . In the end, was this how he saw me? A helpless creature, dependent on his goodwill? It terrified me to even consider it. It was Balsan all over again, only this time I was in love and had no defense against it.

I did not speak as he engulfed me in his arm, leading me back to
our motorcar. Upon my arrival at the shop the next day, I summoned my staff and announced, “I’m not here to spend money as if it grows on trees. Henceforth, I must authorize every expense. And,” I added, with a glance at Lucienne’s satisfied face, “no more free hats.”

It was a small step, in light of my profligacy, but hard earned, nevertheless.

Money was freedom. I did not intend to squander freedom again.

I
n the summer of 1911, Boy took me on vacation to the resort of Deauville.

He insisted on it, though I did not want to leave my shop. Through a harsh regimen of fifteen-hour days and many sleepless nights, I had begun to prosper. Not meteorically, but my clientele steadily increased and improved in stature, the courtesans and actresses augmented by a select list of society women who embraced Poiret’s modernized dress and found my hats the perfect accompaniment. The grandes dames of the haut monde remained enslaved by Worth and other luxury ateliers that garbed them from head to toe; they eschewed me. But others with less to lose, hostesses welcoming artists and bohemians to their salons, began to exchange my plain white calling card among themselves. During my remorseless weekly reviews of my accounts, I finally saw I’d turned a corner and could repay Boy some of the debt I owed him. Soon, I would no longer need his retainer on my line of credit.

He didn’t comment on it, though he must have seen the statements that arrived at his office. I appreciated his discretion, his ability to observe my improvement without gloating over it, and when he suggested it was time to take a holiday, I reluctantly agreed.

Deauville proved to be the balm I needed. Situated on the Normandy coast, before the English Channel, it was full of glamorous restaurants, hotels, casinos, and lengthy promenades. Here, I experienced a relaxation I rarely allowed myself, swimming every day in a daring bathing costume that exposed my arms and shoulders and dining at night in our suite at the Hôtel Normandy, overlooking the pier.

One night, I asked Boy to meet me for dinner in the casino. We had spent several evenings there in the company of his friends—people I’d never met who also lived in Paris, who welcomed him with a familiarity that made me clench my teeth. Among them were long-nosed, beautiful women shimmering with jewels who eyed me from behind languid swishes of their fans. I could practically hear their cruel appraisal of the tradeswoman whom Arthur Capel had seen fit to take up with. I was determined to show them who I truly was.

In a boutique in town, I bought a white silk dress that clung to the body, supple and tucked high at the waist, a dress for sultry nights, unlike any I had seen in Paris. Pairing it with a length of pearls that Boy had given me, I sauntered into the casino with my hair swept back into a chignon at the nape of my neck, held by a piqué band; my long throat and arms were tan from the sun, a touch of kohl at my eyes enhanced their luster.

Boy waited at the table. As he saw me approach, he stood with a knowing smile and drew out my chair. Around us, the haut monde dined on caviar and poached salmon in mint sauce. Champagne by the gallon cooled in buckets of ice. I paused, marking my prey, then leaned to Boy and grazed his cheek with my lips. I heard the rustle of alarm ripple through the dining room, as if the walls had turned to tissue, an urgent susurration as all eyes shifted to watch me sit, not across from Boy as was customary, but directly by his side.

The rest of our table’s chairs, as I had ensured, were empty.

After dinner, they gathered in the mirrored salon to greet me. I was at my most charming, exchanging witticisms and bestowing smiles as though I mixed with such company every hour of every day. With that uncanny intuition women have for threats, I was besieged at the end of the evening
for my card, along with promises that as soon as they returned to Paris, they would call upon me at my shop.

“So daring,” they said, “this bronze color of yours. Do you not fear getting spots from the sun? No? And that dress and pearls—oh, my dear, it’s sublime. You say you make hats? Well, I simply must see them. I’m so terribly bored with the usual.”

When we returned to our hotel, Boy watched me loosen the knot at my nape and allow my hair to fall. He mused, “You would look exquisite with short hair, I think.”

I smiled. “One thing at a time. We mustn’t frighten the herd too much at first.”

“Frighten them?” he growled, and he stalked across the room to seize me in his arms. “You’re a lioness. You’ll eat them all alive and still be ravenous for more.”

He was right. Those credulous gazelles would not sate a hunger like mine.

But it was a start.

WHEN WE ARRIVED BACK IN PARIS,
he said he would drive me to the shop. I was eager to get back to work, to see how many orders had come in during my absence, and get everything ready for the stampede I anticipated. I had no doubt that every one of the women I’d met in Deauville would come.

Boy did not take the route to boulevard Malesherbes, however. Instead, he turned toward the place Vendôme and the district that sold the finest furs, jewelry, and perfumes, driving down the exclusive rue de Saint-Honoré onto rue Cambon across from the back entrance of the Hôtel Ritz, an eighteenth-century palace converted into a luxury hotel renowned for its exclusivity. He brought the car to a halt before a white building festooned with stucco garlands and cherub heads over its classical block façade.

“What is this?” I asked, bemused. Reaching into his pocket, he handed me a set of keys.

“I signed a lease. The back room and mezzanine are yours. It is time.”

With the keys clutched in my hand as he stood behind me grinning, I passed speechless into my new premises. Applause greeted me. Through a haze, I saw my counters and displays with my hats, arranged in black-and-white symmetry to match the decor, with Antoinette, Lucienne, and our assistants, Angèle and Marie-Louise, welcoming me with joy in their eyes.

As I spun about to look back at Boy, he waved from outside and drove away.

THUS DID I INAUGURATE CHANEL MODES.
My new address was elite enough to beckon first the rich wives and daughters of the Deauville set, followed by a few countesses and minor princesses. By 1912, I was photographed for the
Comoedia Illustré
modeling my creations and the popular review
Les Modes
declared me “an original artist.”

Business was brisk, requiring long hours and constant supervision. Boy and I often just passed each other in our apartment on avenue Gabriel, snatching a kiss, a coffee, a quick tumble in the bed, before we parted for our assignments. He was investing heavily in coal, as rumblings from abroad predicted that a looming conflict with Germany would skyrocket the price of fuel. I focused on my immediate turf, gauging the ongoing feud between Poiret and Worth. After everyone else went home, I would experiment in my workroom with certain styles of blouses, belted jackets, and my favored plain skirts. I had begun to hanker for more than hats. I had room to expand if I desired it, but my lease at rue Cambon prohibited me from selling dresses, as there was already a dressmaker in the building—a sour-breathed crone who liked to poke her nose into my shop to wag her finger and threaten, “If I see a single dress in here, I’ll see you evicted.”

What to do?

My answer came from Boy again, though this time it was unintentional. He’d gone to England on business, returning with suitcases packed with items he couldn’t buy in Paris. Fishermen sweaters in cable-knit wool,
cardigans of Scottish tartan in subtle hues, and pullovers in a durable fabric called jersey, which I’d not seen before, utilized by English tailors for school blazers, sporting clothes, and military uniforms, but never for women’s apparel.

I tried on one of his pullovers. The fit overwhelmed me, for Boy was much taller, but I loved the way the ingenious knit draped without the need for excess seams, seeming to have a sense of its own of where to adjust and where to hang loose.

Boy was amused. “I bought those for me,” he said as he found me padding about the apartment in his pullover, getting a feel for how the fabric held up. “They’re for polo games. You’re going to make them smell like you, and then I’ll be too distracted to play.”

I could barely draw a straight line but that didn’t stop me from spending many nights at my worktable trying my hand at different looks I could make with jersey. When I showed these rudimentary sketches to Lucienne, she shook her head. “We only just got off our knees with the hats and now you want to add dresses? Absolutely not. Our lease forbids it. Would you have us thrown out?”

Tapping my foot, I pushed the sketches toward her. “They’re not dresses. They are jackets, blouses, sweaters, coats, and skirts. Not one dress.” I paused, grimacing. “As if any of us needs another frock, with the way those tyrants Poiret and Worth smother us. These are for women like us, everyday women on the streets, made to complement our lifestyle.”

Lucienne did not glance at my designs. “Women on the streets can shop in cheap department stores. These will be too expensive to produce. We would need more staff, have to purchase sewing machines. It’s too difficult. We cannot possibly compete.”

Our sparring had become so routine, none of the staff paid us any mind. Today, however, something different must have heated our tones, for Antoinette approached carefully, scrutinizing each sketch before she ventured, “Why not try? These designs are unique; they go with our hats. I think our customers will like them.”

Seeing that my sister almost never offered an opinion, she managed to
quell Lucienne, who took in my regard before she said, “I’m not a modiste. Selling clothes is not my expertise.”

“Then as you once advised me, you shall have to learn,” I said. “We all must learn. I want to grow Chanel Modes. It is the perfect time, with so much attention on our hats, and our client list gaining prestige. No one else is offering this type of fashion. I know it can be a success.”

“Not with me,” said Lucienne. “It’s not why I came to work for you.”

“Then you needn’t stay,” I told her, and I heard Antoinette gasp. “But I
will
do this, with or without you. I’ll provide you with an excellent reference, of course,” I added, refusing to let sentimentality or fear dissuade me. Boy had said I must believe in myself, and I believed in this new enterprise even more than I had believed in my hats.

Lucienne nodded and turned away. As I looked at my sister, Antoinette asked nervously, “How will we manage without her?”

I collected my sketches. “We’ll manage. I always do.”

LUCIENNE DEPARTED FOR ANOTHER HAT ATELIER.
In time, she would become its director, lauded as Paris’s top milliner. I missed her determination and drive—she was one of the few women I’d met who could match my own—but I’d learned enough by now to supervise the workroom myself and I did not miss our quarrels.

I promoted Angèle to head seamstress, or
première
, in charge of hiring
arpètes,
young girls who apprenticed in the workroom doing chores like passing a magnet over the floor to catch stray needles, or steaming fabric. The most talented of these
arpètes
could rise to become a
petite main
or intermediate seamstress, trained in the craft of producing clothes. Though skilled with my needle and scissors, I was by no means a practiced designer. My method of work was to drape fabric directly upon a dummy or preferably a live model—Antoinette, mostly. I sat for hours, a cigarette hanging from my lips as I pinned and stitched my original garment. Then Angèle and her staff transformed my originals into
toiles,
reproducible patterns sewn in muslin to construct samples for display. We purchased electrical
sewing machines but much of the work still required hand sewing, with each article fitted to a client’s measurements. Antoinette and Angèle would oversee these fittings, while I inspected every item before it went on display, and again, after completion, to ensure it met the client specifications.

Of course, all of this took time: time to import jersey from England; time to decide how to launch my line and decide whether to risk doing it at rue Cambon. The delays gnawed at my patience, for by the end of 1912, Poiret had released simplified apparel that echoed my vision. He couldn’t resist adding dolman sleeves, weighting his day coats with embroidery or sable, marring the streamlined image he sought to achieve, but he, too, had sniffed the hint of change in the air and I fretted he would steal my thunder before I had begun.

Frustrated, I sought an outlet beyond my atelier. I redecorated Boy’s apartment, repainting the red walls in cream, replacing the Oriental carpets with rugs dyed in earth tones, and the still-life paintings with exquisite Coromandel screens. After this was completed—“It looks like a Bedouin palace,” Boy said—I went in pursuit of somewhere else to vent my energy.

The American dancer Isadora Duncan was creating a sensation in Paris with her innovative performances; her philosophy of liberation of the senses through the body appealed to me. I was twenty-nine, I wanted to maintain my slim figure; a couturier, I told myself, must look the part. I didn’t care to consider that I was perhaps more motivated by the fact that Boy traveled often and I suspected he might have other lovers. We had never discussed monogamy or marriage; he used costly lambskin prophylactics to avoid my getting pregnant, and as I had never heard so much as a hint of a bastard child in his life, I assumed he did the same with others. But I was too proud to ask. Instead, I teased, “You must meet many pretty women on your trips.”

Glancing up from his newspaper, he replied, “Not as pretty as you.”

“Me?” I scoffed. “I’m not pretty.”

“No,” he said, “but I’ve never met anyone more beautiful.”

I decided the occasional dalliance when he was away was less worthy of concern than remaining the most beautiful woman he knew, so I enrolled
in lessons from the highly regarded instructor, Élyse Toulemont, known as Caryathis. Every evening I climbed the steep hill to her studio in Montmartre to endure the banging of her cane on the plank floor, which reminded me of les Tantes, and her pinch between my shoulders when I failed to retain a proper stance, which reminded me of the nuns of Aubazine. I was determined to excel, even if I was too old to entertain ballerina ideas.

My fervor for dance amused Boy. In 1913, he bought us tickets to the premiere of the Ballets Russes’
Le Sacre du printemps
with music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.