Mademoiselle Chanel (21 page)

“That was my intent. Her Imperial Majesty desired a scent that would last only as long as her engagements required. She did not wish to go to bed smelling of it.”

I doubted that. The undertone I had detected was unabashedly sensual, and everyone knew how much Alexandra had adored her husband, Nicholas.

“Well, I need it to last longer,” I said, and when he started to protest that it was impossible, I interrupted. “I don’t care about expense. I realize a perfume like this does not come cheap. In fact, I want it to be as expensive as possible, for that is the only way to assure its exclusivity. But it also must be worth its price in value. I would need certain notes enhanced, to linger after the initial bouquet fades. My perfume must mimic nature not by exaggeration but rather by emphasizing the naturalness within it—it must distinguish and individualize, be unforgettable on every woman who wears it. Above all, it must last.”

Despite his apparent skepticism, I saw his eyes widen. He could tell that I’d been studying the complex art of perfume; indeed, I’d done little else in the months since my return from Italy, heaps of books on the subject
littering my apartment on rue Cambon. I understood and respected the painstaking science behind it.

“I was thinking you could add more powdery notes,” I suggested, “iris root, perhaps, and synthetic aldehydes to strengthen its resilience. Do not be afraid to experiment.”

I paused, waiting. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned to a writing pad before him and began to scrawl in an illegible hand. Then he sighed again. “I really don’t know, mademoiselle. I respect your vision, but this type of endeavor has not been done before, let alone sold by a couture house. Moreover, I cannot reproduce the tsarina’s special perfume as formulated under the terms of my contract with Rallet. It belongs to them.”

I leaned over to him, placing both my hands on the table between us.
“I’m not asking you to reproduce it. I don’t want my clients smelling like a dead empress.” As he sucked in a shocked breath, I said, “I’m prepared to pay extremely well if you undertake this project. Dmitri—” I glanced about, but he was gone, had wandered off somewhere, an infuriating tendency he had of late. “The grand duke has assured me you’re the most skilled perfumer in the world. I merely want you to adapt parts of the original formula in order to devise an entirely new fragrance. I leave it up to you as to how you achieve it.”

I had finally snared him; I saw it at once. He was as much a visionary as he claimed I was. Competition in his industry was fierce, a slew of new fragrances appearing as the trend gained momentum, and Ernest Beaux could not repress his love for the special scent he had created for Alexandra. Moreover, I had already delved into his circumstances. He was not Rallet’s chief perfumer, and I offered him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He also knew, as I did, that intellectual property rights did not include perfume formulas. His lie about the company owning the formula for Rallet number one had merely been to test my knowledge.

“How long do I have?” he asked at length.

I considered. “As long as it might take. I can rent a villa nearby and wait.”

“It could take longer than mademoiselle thinks,” he warned. “These distillations are delicate; the synthesis doesn’t happen overnight.”

“I’m aware of it.” I took out my checkbook and wrote an amount, tearing out the draft and slipping it across the table to him. “Will that be enough to start?”

He exhaled, stunned. “My employers will be most grateful for the—”

“No, no.” I smiled. “Your employers need not know. I am hiring you, Monsieur Beaux, not Rallet and Company. This transaction must remain between us.”

As he nodded and pocketed my check, I reached out my hand. He paused, confused, then, when he understood, tentatively took my hand and shook it. I kept my grip firm. “It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Monsieur Beaux.”

As I turned to the door of his office, he said, “That remains to be seen, mademoiselle. I’ve not given you anything of substance yet.”

“Oh, but you will,” I told him. “I have no doubt.”

I HAD GROWN DISINTERESTED
in Dmitri as a lover but the idle months we spent in the villa I rented, where we swam, went shopping in local boutiques, and took evening walks with Pita and Poppée, became some of the most idyllic I would remember.

Dmitri reverted to his sensitive self, attentive during the day and energetic in bed at night; the exposure to sea and sun toughened his demeanor and he drank less.

One evening, he whispered to me, “I know this must end. I do not love you and you don’t love me. But I want to tell you now, before we say good-bye, how grateful I am for your kindness. I will never forget it. I was lost before I met you, but now I have the strength to go out into the world and make something of myself, as Marie has done. You have been so generous to her, too; I know you already commissioned her for your gowns. Coco, you saved our lives.”

I averted my gaze, discomfited by this sudden flood of emotion. “You make me sound like Joan of Arc. You also helped me, as has your sister. It’s not as if I gave something for nothing.” I chuckled, looking back to him. “You should know by now, I never do.”

He arched his brow. “You do far more for others than you care to admit.”

BEAUX HAD PREPARED ELEVEN SAMPLES,
aligned in anonymous glass bottles with plain labels attached, featuring only numbers. I hadn’t eaten or smoked all day; my nose had to be as clear as possible. I did not want to make a mistake.

One by one, Beaux uncapped each sample, starting in reverse. I inhaled deeply, waited, and if the scent showed promise, dripped it on a piece of paper and waved it in the air of that hermetic room. Dmitri waited outside; I went to him with each sample. He shook his head. “No, that’s not it.” I knew he sought the elusive scent of his childhood; returning to the room, I rejected numbers eleven through six.

Beaux handed me sample number five. It was my talismanic numeral, which I had seen reproduced in the star motifs and river-stone mosaics of Aubazine. As I prepared to smell, I heard the abbess as if she stood beside me in her robes:

Wind, earth, fire, water, and, most important of all, spirit. Everything we see around us contains these five elements. Five is the most sacred number in the firmament
.

Then I inhaled.

It took only an instant. I felt it move through me, resurrecting memories of starched linens piled high in cupboards at Aubazine and of the lye soap I still used, of the cool forest of Compiègne I had ridden through with Balsan, and of Émilienne’s rare freshness. And then, with a shudder that brought my hand to my face to hide my sudden tears, the tantalizing hint of warm skin flushed with lust—the smell of me, when Boy had filled my entire being.

“This is it,” I whispered. “This is the one.”

Beaux said anxiously, “Mademoiselle, there are four others. That one, it’s not . . .” His brow furrowed in consternation. “It’s a mistake. I added too much jasmine. I almost didn’t include this sample because it would
be the most expensive of the batch to produce, but I liked its effect so much . . . I didn’t think you’d choose it.”

“This is it.” I dabbed a few drops on my wrist, let it sit for a moment before I brought it again to my nostrils. “I don’t need to smell anything else. This is my perfume, Number 5 by Chanel.”

“It’ll cost a fortune. It’s almost as costly to make as Rallet number one.”

Of course it was. How could it not be?

“I need one hundred bottles,” I said. “I’ll telephone you with the rest of my order.”

I dabbed more of the flawless scent on my throat and wrists, wrote him another substantial check, and drifted out in a haze to Dmitri. I inclined to him, tendering my neck.

He sighed. “Now, you smell like a Romanov.”

I LEFT DMITRI IN BIARRITZ
with a fond farewell and sufficient money to ensure he indeed made something of himself—a goal that apparently entailed meeting an heiress. Before I departed, he handed me an azure velvet box containing a rope of exquisite pearls with an antique gold and diamond boule.

“How did you . . . ?” I let my question linger. We both knew he had no resources with which to have bought me such an extravagance, unless of course he had done so with my money.

“They were my aunt’s, one of the few things I was able to take with me when I was exiled. I’ve had them stored in a vault in the casino all this time.” He grimaced. “Marthe Davelli wanted me to give them to her, but our relationship hardly warranted Romanov pearls.”

“Neither does ours. These are an heirloom. You must give them to your sister.”

“Marie doesn’t want them. She knows I am giving them to you and she approves.”

He had not been the ideal lover, but his gesture, like his sister’s before him, touched me deeply. “I can never wear them in public,” I teased, putting the velvet box into my bag. “Someone will slit my throat to steal them.”

“Then hide them among fake ones,” he replied, unwittingly seeding an idea. “No one will be able to tell which pearls are real and which are not, the same as the way you hide yourself.”

Thus did I return to Paris with my Romanov pearls and a hundred samples of my perfume in square-cut glass bottles that echoed the smaller test samples. I loved the simplicity of the design. Together with Misia, who simply had to have a hand in the packaging, I designed an elegant diamond-shaped stopper that reflected the place Vendôme, along with a white box with black piping. It complemented the seal on the bottleneck with my C within a circle and my new reversed CC logo branded on the lid. I gave the perfume away as gifts to my most loyal clients, ordering my sales force to vaporize the salon with the scent every afternoon when clients came. My live mannequins—I now had over fifty models on whom I created my designs and presented my collections—were to wear the perfume at all times, even when outside the atelier.

I did no other advertising, allowing the clients to spread word among themselves. “Mademoiselle,” they asked, “that exquisite
parfum
. I must tell you, when I wore it to the Opéra the other night my friends buzzed around me, demanding to know where I had bought it.”

“My perfume?” I feigned astonishment. “But it was my gift to you and a few others, a token of my esteem. I discovered it while on summer holiday at this tiny perfumery in Provence. I do not even recall the store’s name. Your friends actually liked it?”

“Mademoiselle, they
adored
it. You simply must bring more to sell!”

Chanel No. 5 proved an instant success. When Beaux sent word that production could begin, I ordered a large supply for my shops in Paris, Deauville, and Biarritz, where it sold out in a matter of weeks. I desperately needed more to offer with my upcoming winter collection inspired by the glamour of Russia and my new working relationship with Marie Pavlovna.

Taking advantage of her workshop’s extraordinary skills, I designed
the roubachka, a peasant blouse made in black crêpe de chine. I also had astrakhan-trimmed coats in silk velvet and quilted charmeuse with matching linings; black, red, and gold tabard dresses with square necklines, flared embroidered cuffs, and low-slung waists; and waterfall gowns beaded in lignite jet. For more traditional day wear, I offered pale gray cape suits fringed in squirrel pelt and lined in foulard; chenille-knitted sweaters and Scottish tricot accessorized with silk-scarf bandeaux for the new short “shingle” hairstyle, as well as cloche hats adorned with faux-jewel pins. My button-strap low-heeled shoes and drop-waist skirts that reached daringly to midcalf caused an uproar. They ushered in the silhouette dubbed as
la garçonne
in Paris—based on the scandalous novel by Victor Margueritte—and as the flapper in London and New York.

My Russian collection garnered me international acclaim. Orders came in from the moment I presented it, my salon filled to overflowing. Needing more salespeople, I supplemented my staff with several Russian princesses and countesses who were eager to work after having sold their jewels to keep a roof over their heads. By the end of 1922, I had two thousand employees working for me in my three establishments.

I entreated Beaux to increase production of No. 5, as we couldn’t satisfy the demand. His inability to keep up would lead me to new business entanglements that I would live to regret.

S
candal of my own awaited me upon my return to Bel Respiro in Garches.

Diaghilev’s second premiere of Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring,
which I financed, had been a triumph, and the Ballets Russes booked subsequent engagements in Germany and Spain. While the composer traveled with the company, his wife and two frail daughters (the entire family seemed destined for an early grave) came from Switzerland to my house and were there by the time I arrived home from Biarritz. Stravinsky returned soon after to waylay me in the living room and declare his undying love for me.

At first, I was flattered, if taken aback. “But your wife is upstairs,” I said. In fact, I could hear her coughing where we stood—a lung-heaving hack that filtered through the floorboards.

“She knows,” he said. “To whom, if not her, would I confide such a great thing as this?”

God save me. Having left one impecunious Russian lover behind, I wasn’t prepared to entertain another. He seemed almost feverish, clasping my hands as Marie, my housekeeper, entered with a tray of tea and cakes, setting it on the table without any indication she’d heard anything. Her discretion was exemplary, matching that of her husband, my butler Joseph, but I feared Stravinsky’s would not be—as he proved when I withdrew my
hands and demurred, “I fear it’s impossible. I’m not . . . I do not feel the same way.” His long, forlorn face tightened as I added, “Oh, I’m very fond of you and in awe of your extraordinary talent, but that’s as far as it can go. You are married. I am not.”

“You’ve loved other men who were married,” he burst out, though I could not determine whether he spoke in anger or sorrow. Regardless, I did not appreciate his allusion to Boy. Then he sighed. “But I see everything I’ve been told is true. Your heart is taken by another.”

The melodrama of the moment might have elicited a dismissive laugh from me had his words not frozen me where I stood. “Everything you’ve been told?” I repeated.

He wrenched a crumpled yellow paper from his pocket. “I was warned. But I thought the Romanov could not hold your affections for long, not when he has so little to offer an accomplished woman like yourself.”

“May I see?” Taking the paper from him—a telegram, sent to Spain from Paris—I read:

COCO IS A LITTLE SEAMSTRESS WHO PREFERS GRAND DUKES TO ARTISTS.

I crunched the paper in my fist. I didn’t need to ask who had wired it to him, at considerable expense. Misia was the culprit, her petty revenge for my financing of Diaghilev, which usurped her place. Stravinsky must have confided his fascination for me to her, and she had sought to ruin our perceived affair, although, in fact, it existed only in his imagination.

Stravinsky blanched. “I’ve offended you. It is inexcusable. I will depart at once.”

“No.” The chill in my tone brought him to a halt. “The woman who sent this is the one whose behavior is inexcusable. I’ll not hear of you leaving.” I forced out a laugh that scraped my throat. “Now, let us have tea, and discuss your future as friends, yes?”

I persuaded him to stay and concentrate on the upcoming engagements he had with the Ballets Russes, emphasizing his wife’s precarious health
and his daughters’ need for stability. Even as he nodded helplessly and implored my forgiveness, I decided my course.

I would not banish Misia from my life, much as I wanted to. She only did what was in her nature; wherever she loved, she scorched. I would simply need to ensure that her destructive tendencies did not upend my existence any further.

Friends we would remain, but only on my terms.

IN EARLY 1923,
I approached my fortieth birthday. I took excellent care of myself, keeping up my dance lessons and refraining from overindulgences. Everyone always told me I looked half my age; what was my secret? Their flattery had seeped into me, soothing the thin doubtful child I had been and the brash young woman who had sung her heart out at La Rotunde, even if I could see the passage of time leaving its subtle mark upon me. I abetted my illusion of youthfulness by framing my elfin features with my short stylish hair, using only the faintest traces of mascara to enhance my great black eyes and never appearing in public without my signature red lipstick. In defiance of the norm, I was bronze from sunbathing, a habit I had picked up in Italy and which prompted every client of mine to lather themselves in coconut oil on the beaches from the Côte d’Azur to Deauville.

Still, forty years was a milestone I was determined to celebrate not with coy evasions but rather in the bold style for which I had become famous. Moving out of Bel Respiro, I leased the spacious Hôtel de Lauzan in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré—an estate built in 1719 with a garden that stretched down to avenue Gabriel, where Boy and I had spent our happiest years. Perhaps I had not escaped my father’s urge to wander, or maybe I grew weary of the weight of memories that my homes seemed to accumulate. I had become accustomed to a peripatetic existence and welcomed the change, furnishing my new residence with my sandalwood Coromandel screens, Venetian mirrors, and antique statues bought in Italy. I added crystal-ball lamps with parchment shades and Louis XIV sofas in beige.

Here, I became a hostess in my own right. Friends came in droves—Picasso, Cocteau, Diaghilev, and Vera Bate, a charming redheaded divorcée with numerous social connections who’d met me in my atelier and urged me to open a boutique in London. My biggest orders still came from America, where my clothes matched that fast-paced world, but I gained fame in England, as well, and Vera was one of my staunchest advocates. A fixture on the elite British circuit, she was also perennially short of funds, so I hired her to wear my designs and attract potential clients in her circle.

“That little writer of yours, Cocteau,” Vera now remarked, “he needs a cure.”

My friends were gathered in my living room for cocktails before attending a performance of the Ballets Russes, whose costumes I had designed. A Bessie Smith recording played on my brand-new Brunswick phonograph, imported from America, as Vera and I sat at my mirrored bar on the raised stools that gave me an imperious view of the assembly.

I sipped my drink. “He’s merely exuberant. He wrote the libretto for the play tonight. He always gets nervous before premieres.” At that moment, Cocteau was perched atop one of my sofas, gesticulating, his hair tangled about his animated face as Misia, who had begrudgingly joined my soirees after she realized she’d otherwise be left bored at home, urged him on.

“Oh, I think he’s more than exuberant,” said Vera. “Haven’t you noticed he’s flown with cocaine? He and that other gaunt fellow—what’s his name again?”

“Raymond Radiguet. He’s also a writer.”

“Another one?” Vera sighed, toying with the bugle beads of her gown, one of my creations. “Well, he and his friend Radiguet were holed up in one of the powder rooms upstairs, snorting it. I believe they smoked opium, too. The entire upper floor reeks of it.”

I smiled through my teeth. I had warned Cocteau about not indulging his vices in my house but he was desperately infatuated with handsome, dissolute Radiguet, whose sexually explicit novel
The Devil in the Flesh
had catapulted him to fame. “It’s all the rage among these writers and artists,” I said, with feigned nonchalance. “They mean no harm.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. But don’t you get tired of their bombast and poverty, all crowded together in Montparnasse? It’s so passé. You should broaden your social horizons. None of these people can properly wear your clothes, much less afford them. And you have a birthday coming up in August; you cannot mean to spend it like this, among scribblers and addicts? Forty years should be done up in style.”

“Actually, I plan to throw a party in Monte Carlo, on a yacht.” As her expression turned avid, for Vera loved extravagance, though like those she denigrated she could hardly afford it, I went on, “Though how I’ll fit all my scribblers and addicts onboard remains to be seen.”

“A yacht!” she exclaimed. “I know the perfect one! And there’s a perfect English lord to go with it, who asked me all sorts of questions about you when I was in London. He’s—”

Cocteau’s febrile voice interrupted her: “Coco, darling, are you coming?” Someone had coaxed him off the sofa and the guests were gathering to depart for the theater. As I slipped from the stool to reach for my black embroidered wrap, Vera said, “He really is divine. You must meet him. He’ll be in Monte Carlo this very summer, in fact.”

“Oh?” With a glazed smile, I waved Vera to my car, telling her I would join her in a minute. As Misia struggled into her too-snug coat, I pulled her aside. “I need the address of the best rehabilitation facility you know,” I hissed, even as I didn’t fail to note the irony that I sought the assistance of another addict. But Misia had never shown Cocteau’s level of excess, though I wondered if she perhaps abetted it. My rising social influence had eclipsed hers, and as she demonstrated with Stravinsky, she was nothing if not envious. She was perfectly capable of giving Cocteau the drugs in order to lure him from my side.

Misia went still. “Oh, no. Have you been using too much . . . ?”

“Not for me. For Cocteau.” I hauled her coat over her shoulders, tucking her bobbed hair over the collar (she had cut her hair short like mine, though it did not suit her). “That lover of his, Radiguet, is intolerable, and you know how easily influenced Jean is. He needs our help before he ends up in the gutter.”

As I’d hoped, the words “our help” were music to her ear. “I’ll telephone you tomorrow,” she said eagerly. “The poor dear, now that you mention it, he hasn’t been looking at all well.” As I turned to follow the others to the waiting cars, Misia added spitefully, “You must be so pleased with yourself. So celebrated everywhere, the toast of the society columns, the most acclaimed
couturière
in Paris, and now, muse to every starving artist. No one even remembers that it was
I,
darling, who first taught you to appreciate modern art. Perhaps it won’t be too long before you welcome one of them into your empty bed, as well?”

I glowered. She always managed to find one raw nerve.

After I slid into the backseat of my Rolls and rapped on the glass partition to alert my chauffeur that he could drive, Vera gave me a tart look. “Misia Sert certainly seems to know a great deal about too many things, doesn’t she?” she said, betraying that she had overheard.

“Entirely,” I replied. “This Englishman you mentioned, I’d like to hear more about him.”