I began this biography without any specific knowledge of the person behind the Chanel brand, and now, I can say quite confidently that I probably know more about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel than I ever really needed to know. To be fair, that is not a bad thing. Rhonda Garelick’s book is fiercely researched, punctuated at times with triumphant announcements regarding new information for what must be an already well-trod field. I was fascinated by Chanel’s rags to riches story, awed even by the tremendous wealth she accumulated despite some questionable business deals and poor judgement when it came to men.

At times, I imagined Mademoiselle Chanel as the Forrest Gump of Fashion — there was literally no movement or trend in her long lifetime that she didn’t get in on, no historic moment she missed. Unfortunately, this put her right in the center of several unsavory situations, and facts about her Nazi ties later in the book leveled the esteem I had begun to feel for her .

Chanel was the embodiment of two clashing extremes — a lonely girl searching for true love, and a ruthless business-woman using a combination of genius and feminine wiles to win her way to the top. (Yes, I did use the term “feminine wiles” — sorry about that, but that is the nicest way I could describe it. Besides, she really was a master manipulator.) At times I did not buy the true love thing, especially when she seemed hell-bent on “marrying up”, but I did not, in the end, believe she was ever content or truly happy. Yes, rich, immeasurably wealthy. When I was young and single, I used to quote a Joan Rivers line, “People always say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.” I think Coco Chanel believed that too. But somehow, reading this book made me appreciate my ordinary life and my loving family just that much more.

Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History is a biography of a perplexing and interesting woman.

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel is famous, of course, for being a great fashion designer, possibly the most iconic of the 20th century.  She liberated women from hobble skirts and corsets not once, but twice.  She made costumes for important theatrical productions of the 1920s and 1930s (and was very angry when she was not given the job to make the costumes for the Broadway musical about her own life).  She had what was probably the most improbable comeback by a fashion designer of all time, when she returned to the haute couture scene in 1953, at the age of 70, after being out of the business since 1939.  (The Parisians sneered at that collection; until they saw it was a massive hit - in America.  Where all the money was.)

She concocted what has been the world's best-selling perfume pretty much since its introduction in the 1920s - Chanel No. 5, the world's first perfume using synthetic chemicals.  And then fought a long battle with the perfumery's owners, the Wertheimers, for 30 or 40 years.

She was also a liar about her own past, particularly her childhood, her years as a courtesan, and what exactly she did during World War 2.  (Hint: it is clear she went far beyond the "I collaborated in order to survive" category, and even beyond the "I did business with the Nazis to make a lot of money" category, as she not only had closed her fashion house in 1939, but was the mistress of a high-ranking German officer, and was a Nazi spy as well, though not a terribly good one.)

Organization is mostly by lover (of whom she had many, probably of both sexes).  Most of them, with a couple of important exceptions, were conservative politically - royalists like the Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov and the Duke of Westminster, or fascists or their fellow travelers (many of the others). 

There is also an interesting discussion of how the language of iconography used by the Nazis, and Chanel's use of it in fashion, are much from the same playbook.  I'm not sure that I buy this, but it was a very interesting theory.  She was clearly a woman of great talent, but also of great contradictions.

This book focuses itself on Chanel's life, not her fashion, though there are indeed pictures of that fashion from different periods in her life.  There's also a discussion of what happened to the House of Chanel after her death.

My ARC courtesy of Random House/Net Galley - much thanks!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, in return for an honest review.

Published September 30, 2014 by Random House Publishing Group

608 pages

(While technically speaking I haven’t finished this, I wanted to get my thoughts down, as I plan to dip in and out of it for a while, rather than trying to down it all at once.)

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was a prolific and fairly effective liar. Biographers and design fetishists like to say something more grand, like “self-mythologizer,” and I suppose when you are a brand first and a person second that is the expectation. But let’s call it like it is; Coco Chanel delighted in telling lies that would obscure and romanticize what she considered a boring and pitiable childhood and adolescence. She also notoriously shut down nearly every attempt to write (or more accurately, publish) her biography in her lifetime, and even beyond the grave. So, in undertaking this project, Rhonda Garelick has set herself quite a challenge. And she has succeeded marvelously, so far as I can say.  By taking on Chanel’s story and treating it as more than just the events in a single life, she has constructed a grand history of figures and events spanning the 80-plus years of Chanel’s life, allowing the time, place, and people surrounding the designer to tell us the story Chanel never would. The book is massive in scope (and literal size at 608 pages), and minute in detail.  Every person, large or small, that touched Chanel’s life is in here, and every historical and personal event Garelick can substantiate with any degree of authenticity is likewise captured.

Chanel was a bundle of contradictions and was forever trying to find acceptance among the social elite and alleviate her sense of inferiority as a lower-class orphan. Her survival instincts were impeccable, though they often caused her to make questionable decisions; she was effectively a Nazi sympathizer, and she was well-known as the mistress of a string of married men. But she is also revered as a liberator of women from the oppression of voluminous and restrictive clothing (as well as certain social mores), and one of the first couturiers to give her seamstresses paid vacations.  She was a business woman when it was not only uncommon, but often unacceptable, and she pulled herself up from the bottom rung of the social ladder using her charm and ingenuity- making connections, and using every opportunity that came her way. Despite shrouding her own life in a romantic fog, she was notoriously clear-eyed about the ways of the world, and not afraid to make enemies.

The designer’s personal and professional life is at the forefront, but the many movements and influences that shaped her designs are detailed as well.  She has been credited with the “invention” of the Little Black Dress, which anyone interested in fashion history knows is a bit of a tall tale. And yet, it can’t be denied that she brought a whole new perspective to fashion- for good and ill. While she freed women in a physical sense from stays and layers, her creations were monumentally expensive for all of their simplicity, cheap fabrics, and costume jewelry, and her silhouette required a complete 180-degree reversal from the previous expectations for women; slim was in and dieting practically became a competitive sport. She also can be credited with the creation of the now commonplace celebrity-designer relationship, as well as the commodification of her own name, now immortalized in the interlocking Cs seen on her luxury goods for decades and still omnipresent around the world.

The breadth of Garelick’s research is astonishing, and the narrative, though occasionally rendered a bit heavy by so much detail, is entertaining. I plan on stretching it out for a while, and enjoying it the whole way.

(Cross-posted at Goodreads: Mademoiselle)