Mademoiselle Chanel

For Melisse, the only person I know who loves Chanel more
than I do, and for Jennifer, who always believes

My life didn’t please me, so I created my life.

—
GABRIELLE “COCO” CHANEL

FEBRUARY 5, 1954

T
he herd gathers below. I can hear them, all the journalists and eager celebrities, and select critics who received my embossed invitation. I hear their excited voices, a buzz that creeps up the mirrored staircase to where I wait in my disordered atelier.

About me, the twelve models are already dressed in my new creations, wreathed in clouds of cigarette smoke and my signature perfume. I’ve asked for silence as I lie on my back checking their hem lengths and snipping at stray threads. I cannot think when they chatter, but there is no stopping them. They tug the jeweled belts of my black gowns, clanking their bracelets and clicking their pearls; they reflect the agitation I feel but cannot show.

I rise to my feet, letting my scissors dangle on their ribbon around my neck. I know the speculation going on below: Will she do it?
Can
she do it? She is seventy-one. She hasn’t designed a dress in fifteen years. After falling so low, how can she possibly rise again?

How, indeed.

None of this is new to me. I have faced it all before. The expectation of failure, the craving for adulation; these are the hallmarks of my life. I light another cigarette and survey the models before me. “You,” I tell a dark-haired girl who reminds me of myself at her age. “Too many bracelets. Remove one.” Even as she flushes and does as I ask, I hear my beloved Boy whisper in my ear, “Remember, Coco, you’re only a woman.”

Only a woman who must continue to reinvent herself if she is to survive.

I catch sight of myself in one of the room’s mirrors—my Gypsy skin and mouth red with lipstick, my thick brows and flashing gold-brown eyes, my body all angles and edges in my braided pink suit. There is nothing left of the pliant skin of my youth. And my hands, covered in precious rings, are as raw as a stonemason’s, knotted, marred by a thousand needle pricks—the hands of the Auvergne peasant I am at heart, the foundling, the orphan, the dreamer, the schemer. My hands reflect who I am. I see in them the struggle that has always existed between the humble girl I once was and the legend I deliberately created to hide my heart.

Who is Coco Chanel?

“ALLEZ,”
I CALL OUT.
The models line up at the head of the staircase to my salon. I have overseen this ritual so many times before, straightening a sleeve at the last minute, adjusting the tilt of a hat, the fold of a collar. As I wave the models forward, I draw back. I will not make my appearance until the applause has faded—
if
there is applause.

I cannot be sure anymore, not after all this time.

Coiling my knees to my chest, my cigarettes at my side, I silence the chimes of my bijoux and perch at the top of my mirrored stairs, becoming a hidden spectator, solitary, as I have always been.

And as I behold my uncertain future, I will reflect on my past and do my best to tell the truth, though myth and rumor clothe me as much as my signature crêpe de chine or tweed.

I will try to remember that for all my triumphs and mistakes, I am still only a woman.