Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life

by Lisa Chaney

Overview

The controversial story of Chanel, the twentieth century's foremost fashion icon.

Revolutionizing women's dress, Gabrielle "Coco'' Chanel was the twentieth century's most influential designer. Her extraordinary and unconventional journey-from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour- helped forge the idea of modern woman.

Unearthing an astonishing life, this remarkable biography shows how, more than any previous designer, Chanel became synonymous with a rebellious and progressive style. Her numerous liaisons, whose poignant and tragic details have eluded all previous biographers, were the very stuff of legend. Witty and mesmerizing, she became muse, patron, or mistress to the century's most celebrated artists, including Picasso, Dalí, and Stravinsky.

Drawing on newly discovered love letters and other records, Chaney's controversial book reveals the truth about Chanel's drug habit and lesbian affairs. And the question about Chanel's German lover during World War II (was he a spy for the Nazis?) is definitively answered.

While uniquely highlighting the designer's far-reaching influence on the modern arts, Chaney's fascinating biography paints a deeper and darker picture of Coco Chanel than any so far. Movingly, it explores the origins, the creative power, and the secret suffering of this exceptional and often misread woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101545867
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/10/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	397,988
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lisa Chaney has taught at Oxford, covered cultural history for British TV and radio, and written for The Guardian and The Independent, among other publications. The author of two previous biographies, Elizabeth David and Hide-and-Seek With Angels: A Life of J.M. Barrie, she lives in York, England.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Prologue: You're Proud, You'll Suffer 1

1 Forebears 5

2 The Bad One 11

3 The Lost Years 15

4 Things That I Should Be and Which I Am Not 24

5 A Rich Man's Game 40

6 Captive Mistress 54

7 Arthur Capel 64

8 Refashioning Paris 74

9 The Rite of Spring 85

10 The End of an Epoque 96

11 Master of Her Art 105

12 The War Bans the Bizarre 116

13 Remember That You're a Woman 123

14 Alone 135

15 Beginning Again 148

16 The Strangest and Most Brilliant Years 159

17 Dmitri Pavlovich 168

18 The Lucky N° 5 181

19 Entirely in White and Covered in Pearls 194

20 Reverdy 212

21 At the Center 223

22 Bend'Or 239

23 The Crash 257

24 Schiap Had Lots of It but It Was Bad 274

25 War 286

26 Survival 297

27 Von Dincklage 315

28 Exile 335

29 Return: 1954 349

30 I Prefer Disaster to Nothingness 361

31 I Only Hear My Heart on the Stairs 379

Afterword: Those on Whom Legends Are Built Are Their Legends 393

Acknowledgments 400

Notes 405

Select Bibliography 424

Illustration Credits 430

Index 433

Editorial Reviews

The most thoroughly fleshed out of the new books about Chanel. . . . Ms. Chaney takes care to give detailed context all the way along, but not so much that she pulls us off the path. One appreciates her elegant tutorials.” — The Wall Street Journal

“Stuffed with just-so details as it sketches the arc of a remarkable life.” — Harper's Magazine


“Relying on newly released love letters, private diaries, and reminiscences . . . and using Chanel’s own words wherever possible, Chaney reveals the woman behind the icon. . . . Most important here is Chaney’s insight into Chanel’s role in creating the modern, independent woman.” — Library Journal


"Chaney’s engagement with her subject is evident throughout, and her exhaustive research into Chanel’s life—especially its darker, more enigmatic corners—and the cultural history she so profoundly impacted make the book as fascinating as it is informative." — Kirkus Reviews


“Deeply researched, Chaney’s enthralling biography unearths previously unavailable sources to reveal the elementally conflicted yet unequivocally gifted woman whose name will always be synonymous with sophistication and originality.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

Deeply researched, Chaney’s enthralling biography unearths previously unavailable sources to reveal the elementally conflicted yet unequivocally gifted woman whose name will always be synonymous with sophistication and originality.

Booklist

Stuffed with just-so details as it sketches the arc of a remarkable life.

Harper's Magazine

The most thoroughly fleshed out of the new books about Chanel. . . . Ms. Chaney takes care to give detailed context all the way along, but not so much that she pulls us off the path. One appreciates her elegant tutorials.

The Wall Street Journal

British author Chaney (Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J.M. Barrie) serves up an excellent complement to Hal Vaughan's hyped Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War. Relying on newly released love letters, private diaries, and reminiscences Chanel shared with writer Paul Morand before her death, Chaney eschews politics to highlight the Chanel aesthetic—the philosophy of art, fashion, and creativity at the heart of her iconic brand. Chanel's life unfolds in detail—her impoverished youth, relationships with artists, writers, and musicians in Paris, self-serving love affairs, business partnerships, and scandalous at the time behaviors (bisexuality and drug use among them). Using Chanel's own words wherever possible, Chaney reveals the woman behind the icon—her vulnerability, loneliness, and disappointment at remaining childless. Most important here is Chaney's insight into Chanel's role in creating the modern, independent woman, who prized both beauty and functionality. Open about the difficulty of unraveling the various myths surrounding Chanel, Chaney concludes with a look at what became of the brand after her death. VERDICT While Vaughan's work focuses on Chanel's alleged pro-Nazi liaisons during and after World War II, Chaney details the totality of Chanel's life. Recommended for general readers interested in biography, fashion, and modern womanhood.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Library Journal

In this ambitious, engrossing biography, Chaney (Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J.M. Barrie, 2006, etc.) delves into the life and times of one of the 20th century's most controversial fashion icons. The author probes beneath the cool exterior of Coco Chanel (1883–1971), the woman who, for all the money, status and power she attained, would always "remain self-conscious about her background," and whose personal torment over a tragic past would later manifest as an addiction to morphine. Chaney chronicles Chanel's early life in France, from her birth into a family of "impoverished, nomadic market-traders" and difficult adolescence at a convent orphanage to her years as a struggling apprentice seamstress. Hard-working and ambitious, Chanel understood that men were critical to her advancement and took young scions of wealthy families as her lovers. One such individual, Arthur Capel, not only became the love of her life, but also the man who helped Chanel establish the "little business" that, by the end of World War I, was well on its way to becoming a fashion empire. In the 1920s, Chanel catapulted to the center of cultural and artistic life in Paris, a place she occupied almost continuously until her death. Beautiful, provocative and possessed of a "mordant wit," she became linked to celebrated artists such as Stravinsky, Picasso and Dalí; members of the Russian nobility; other women; and, during World War II, a German soldier with Nazi ties. Chaney's engagement with her subject is evident throughout, and her exhaustive research into Chanel's life--especially its darker, more enigmatic corners--and the cultural history she so profoundly impacted make the book as fascinating as it is informative.

Kirkus Reviews