I have been reading these new books in between marvelling at the way Chanel’s language of fashion continues to shape the latest collections. Just look at the Jazz Age dresses and Coco white collars atop black sweaters. Two of the books are by academics: Amy de la Haye’s Chanel: Couture and Industry (V & A, £19.99) and Linda Simon’s Coco Chanel (one of the Critical Lives series published by Reaktion, £10.95); the author of the former is a professor at the London College of Fashion, the latter an English professor in New York, and both are an indication of the central status that Chanel occupies in the history and culture of the 20th century.
As for the others – Hal Vaughan’s headline-grabbing account that depicts Chanel as a Nazi agent (Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent, Chatto, £20), Lisa Chaney’s Chanel: an Intimate Life (Fig Tree, £25) and Isabelle Fiemeyer’s Intimate Chanel (Flammarion, £35) – well, where to begin? I am not convinced by Vaughan’s interpretation of Intelligence sources. We have both spent much time researching military archives, but draw differing conclusions; my own view about Chanel’s wartime activities is somewhat less sensational than his. Of the two biographies that promise intimate truths, Chaney’s text is undeniably thorough, but Fiemeyer has the distinct advantage of having collaborated with Chanel’s closest surviving relative, her great niece Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie, who knew her well.
Gabrielle the younger, born in 1926 (and rumoured by some to have been Chanel’s granddaughter; her father, André Palasse, officially Chanel’s nephew, was certainly as close as a son) was enormously helpful to me in my researches, and her memories and inheritance are displayed again here. The unhappiness of Chanel’s past is made clear – both of Coco’s sisters committed suicide, according to Madame Labrunie – but perhaps most intriguing of all are the photographs of the talismans that Chanel held most dear.
If her life and work was shaped by magical signs and symbols (numerology, tarot, with the dead always close at hand) then some of her esotericism was passed on by her first great love, Boy Capel, as is evident in his handwritten notebook that she treasured after his death in a car crash in 1919. This contains fragments from sacred texts – including theosophy, alchemy, Masonic secrets – and provides an intriguing context to Chanel’s jewellery collection, including the Egyptian medallion that she wore constantly and the child’s ring with which she was buried.
In the end, however closely we may study these and other precious objects, no one can ever fully possess Chanel, although she continues in her remarkable possession of us.
* Justine Picardie’s Coco Chanel: the Legend and the Life is published by HarperCollins at £14.99
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