The Allure of Chanel

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I arrived at rue Cambon for the first time. A New Year’s Eve party in 1921, I believe. “You’re all invited to Coco’s,” Misia had said to us; all, that is to say les Six, our group from Le Boeuf sur le Toit, the young people from Madame Alphonse Daudet’s salon, the regulars from the Jean Hugos’ studio at the Palais Royal, and those who attended our Saturday evening dinner parties at Darius Milhaud’s home. Chanel had not yet conquered Paris; the buffet had been laid out in the fitting rooms which had remained as they were in 1914, rather like a private clinic, in which Mme Langweil’s Coromandel screens had not yet unfurled their autumn leaves. Apart from her Deauville clients, or some polo players, friends of the Capel whom she had just lost, Chanel was very lonely, very shy, very closely watched; that evening Misia brought along people who would be Chanel’s life-long companions, the Philippe Berthelots, Satie, Lifar, Auric, Segonzac, Lipschitz, Braque, Luc-Albert Moreau, Radiguet, Sert, Elise Jouhandeau, Picasso, Cocteau, Cendrars (not Reverdy yet). Their presence alone marked the break with 1914, a past now dismissed, and a path that opened to the future, a future in which bankers would no longer be called Salomon, but Boy, or Lewis, where Satie would not write Espana, but Espagna, where perfumes would no longer be called Trèfle incarnate and Rêve d’automne, but would bear a reference number, as convicts do.

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