ST_OCTOBER_18

THE DESIGNERS
The Secret Life of
COCO CHANEL
Writer Justine Picardie uncovers the truth about the iconic designer's youth, before she became an enduring
legend. Read the story below and then check out exclusive illustrations of Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld.
Karl Lagerfeld
People often ask me, "When did you first become interested in
Coco Chanel?" and if I'm honest, I was fascinated long before I
started researching her biography more than a decade ago, all
the way back to my earliest memories in childhood. For there
on top of my mother's dressing table stood a bottle of Chanel
No. 5, beyond my reach but not out of sight, and I knew from the
moment I began to discern its mysterious letters and number
that there was something magical to the black-and-white cipher.
I'm not alone in that discovery — Chanel has come to represent
the essence of everywoman, whether in the scent of her perfume
or her choice of bold red lipstick or the perfect little black dress
— but the story of Coco feels somehow entwined with my own
as a writer.
And so it was that I found myself on a journey, following clues that
Chanel had kept hidden in her long life as a couturiere and fashion icon
while also trying to make sense of the unhappy end of my marriage,
the latter disaster coinciding with my signing a publishing contract.
There-after, in the process of uncovering the truth about Coco
Chanel, I was — without quite knowing it at the time — recovering
from an unforeseen emotional unravelling. Now, in retrospect, I'm
beginning to see that I could not have written my book on Coco
Chanel without that personal experience of loss; nor would I have
found a way forward for myself without looking back at the example
set by Mademoiselle Chanel.
by Justine Picardie
marrying another woman, although their affair continued until his
death); on the table in front of the beige suede sofa (the cushions
quilted like Chanel's iconic bags) sit a set of crested, gold-lined boxes
presented to her by the Duke of Westminster, the second Englishman
to whom she gave her heart but whose name was never to become
hers in marriage.
Most poignant of all, in this glittering salon where Mademoiselle
entertained some of the most celebrated men of the century —
Picasso, Dalí, Cocteau, Diaghilev, Churchill — yet finally found herself
alone, are the pairs of animals that seem to stand like talismans:
two bronze deer by the fireplace, almost life-size; a stag and a doe,
their cloven feet sinking into the carpet, and another tiny pair beside
the sofa in painted metal, with vases of pink flowers on their backs;
two camels on a side table; two frogs (one glass, one bronze); two
lovebirds made of pearl in a tiny jewelled cage; two porcelain horses
on either side of the smoky mirror; and two golden firedogs in the
empty hearth.
The trail began in Paris at 31 Rue Cambon, the backbone of the
House of Chanel, where the famous mirrored staircase leads from
the ground-floor entrance to the couture salon on the first floor and
then to Mademoiselle's private apartment. I'd visited it at the end of
the '90s, when I first interviewed Karl Lagerfeld, but upon returning to
it — again and again, in the course of researching Chanel's biography
— I began to recognize traces of the woman who had fashioned this
place in her image. The doors into the apartment are hidden within
the looking-glass walls of the landing, and slipping inside feels oddly
akin to entering an Alice in Wonderland realm. On the other side of the
glass, there are more mirrors — each reflecting the other, in a myriad
of perspectives — and a crystal chandelier designed by Chanel
herself, with hidden double C's in its wrought-iron frame and, at the
top, G's for Gabrielle, her real name. And everywhere
is evidence of what she had and what she lost: On a wall of
bookshelves are leather-bound volumes from her first great love, Boy
Capel, the British playboy and industrialist who was killed in a car
crash in 1919 (by which point he had already betrayed her by
Conitnued on pg 48
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