Finding fresh material in a new Chanel memoir …
When we think of the most famous French women of all time, Coco Chanel tops the list. The iconic French fashion designer retains an aura of mystique more than half a century after her death. In a new illustrated biography, Chanel: Her Intimate World (Flammarion), Chanel expert Isabelle Fiemeyer offers new insights. Through candid interviews with Chanel’s only direct descendant, her goddaughter and grand-niece Gabrielle “Tiny” Palasse-Labrunie, we get glimpses of the woman behind the icon. Palasse-Labrunie was the daughter of André Palasse, who was Chanel’s nephew, although some, including Fiemeyer, strongly suspect that he was actually Coco Chanel’s son.
Coco Chanel with André Palasse as a boy. © Private Collection / Photo Francis Hammond
Along with the familiar biographical details of Chanel’s life, Feimeyer also explores the more intangible aspects of Chanel – her creativity and inspirations, her motivations, her spiritual beliefs, her moments of self-doubt. Chanel counted many creative giants of the 20th century as friends, from Jean Cocteau to Salvador Dali to Igor Stravinsky. She was superstitious, believing in destiny, lucky numbers and symbols.
The ruby, pearl, and emerald necklace given to Coco Chanel by Paul Iribe, which she wore faithfully from 1934 onward. P.10 © Private Collection /Photo Francis Hammond
While she espoused simplicity in her clothes, her jewellery was spectacular – huge jewelled cuffs and necklaces made of oversized gemstones and pearls, some gifts from her wealthy boyfriends, others commissioned herself. Palasse-Labrunie remembers designing jewellery alongside her. “I used to help her make her maquettes in modelling clay and set the stones in them, then she would hand them to her jeweller with her instructions.”
At La Pausa, her villa at Roquebrune. © Photo Roger Schall © Schall Collection.
Chanel suffered much tragedy in her life, beginning with her mother’s death from tuberculosis when she was just twelve. Her father abandoned the family, leaving Chanel to be brought up in an orphanage run by nuns. Tragedy struck again, in 1919 when the love of her life, Arthur “Boy” Capel, was killed in a car crash at the age of 38. Two of her sisters died by suicide.
“Chanel sought inspiration everywhere, particularly in art and literature.”
Chanel’s wartime relationship with the German diplomat Hans Günther von Dincklage has long cast a shadow over her legacy, and in an additional chapter called “Alias Coco” Feimeyer presents in painstakingly researched detail how Chanel came to be registered by the Germans as an agent.
Feimeyer has found testimony from a Nazi officer stating that the registration was done, without Chanel’s knowledge, in order to justify an intervention to rescue her nephew, André, from a prisoner of war camp. Feimeyer also appears to refute the writer Hal Vaughan’s claims that Chanel appeared on a blacklist drawn up in 1943 by the French Resistance. “Chanel does not appear on the list,” she writes. “Vaughan seems to have been misled by the inclusion of a certain ‘Chemel.’ In the same fi le, we learn that it was a man named Marcel Chemel.”
Chanel’s white coat that was in the workshop at the time of her death.
After the death of Boy, Chanel had a few significant romantic relationships, one with the Duke of Westminster that began in 1924, and another with the art deco designer Paul Iribe. When Iribe died of a heart attack in front of her in 1935, she could no longer bear the weight of her grief. She had trouble sleeping and turned to Sedol, a morphine derivative that she injected every night until her death in 1971. “She was extremely disciplined about it,” her grand-niece Palasse-Labrunie told Feimeyer. “She never did anything without her doctor’s agreement, never allowed herself to increase the dose.”
“Chanel was proud of her success and all that she had achieved.”
Marinière blouse in ivory silk jersey, spring-summer 1916 collection.
By the end of her life, Chanel suffered from loneliness and seemed to regret never having married. Palasse-Labrunie said she told her “Deep down, Tiny, you were the one who was right, you have a husband and children, and I am alone.”
As is often the way, it is the unexpected small details that are the most striking in this new book, such as Palasse-Labrunie’s revelation that Chanel was obsessed with cleanliness, an obsession that intensified after the death of Paul Iribe in 1935. Likewise, it is a surprise that she was not materialistic. She kept very few personal things. In a leather briefcase, which she gave to Palasse-Labrunie for safekeeping, was Boy’s notebook, the one in which he transcribed meditations and inspirational ideas for her, poems and letters from the poet Paul Éluard, photos of her family and some childhood drawings by Palasse-Labrunie. Such details only make Coco Chanel all the more interesting.
Chanel: Her Intimate World by Isabelle Fiemeyer (Flammarion) is out now.
