Mademoiselle Chanel (26 page)

M
y prêt-à-porter collection helped reestablish my reputation. I earned significant fees from the licensing to manufacturers, and as I had predicted, Schiaparelli was vociferous in her criticism of me, calling my decision to allow copies of my work made “a betrayal of couture.” When asked about my reasons by the
Daily Mail,
I replied, “Clothes are made to be worn and discarded. You cannot protect what is already dead.”

Nevertheless, my clientele continued to dwindle; I had to cut my workforce from nearly four thousand to three thousand, and economize in my choice of fabrics.

Abandoning my
garçonne
silhouette that epitomized the 1920s, I presented a dazzling new collection for the 1933 spring season, emphasizing the feminine in white day dresses of cotton-silk and chiffon with gossamer sleeves, floppy bows at the waist or rhinestone-studded ribbons crisscrossing shoulders and backs, as well as unisex trousers and a camellia motif on black suits.
Vogue
applauded my innovation, but more and more fickle women absconded to Schiaparelli and her partnership with Dalí. In return, I expanded my perfume empire with new fragrances: No. 22, Glamour, and Gardenia. None proved as profitable as No. 5—none could be—and my battle with the Wertheimers turned acrimonious as I fought them with
everything at my disposal, including paying a retainer to Bendor’s lawyer to advise mine in France, seeking any means I could to break the contract I had signed so carelessly years before.

Pierre Wertheimer eventually came to see me at my atelier. He arrived with his briefcase in hand, alone and portly in his bowler hat and overcoat, his expression mournful but steadfast.

“My brother Paul and I have discussed this at length and agree to increase your share by five percent. We do not want legal trouble between us. It does not serve our mutual interests.”

“That is unacceptable,” I said. “My name is on the bottle and that warrants a far bigger share in the profits. Lest you forget, I hired you, monsieur, not the other way around.”

“Yes, you hired us to
distribute
it, mademoiselle.” He smiled. “We have done what we promised, as stated in the contract.” He tapped the document, as if to draw my attention to it. “You cannot now decide to renegotiate terms because the perfume is more successful than you envisioned. It is successful precisely because of our hard work.”

“But I am the one who created it.” I leaned to him, taking momentary satisfaction in his visible discomfort. “My name gives the perfume prestige, so a raise of a mere five percent is a crime. You are taking millions in profit to line your own pockets.”

He sat quietly for a moment, regarding me, before he sighed, leafed through the contract to a page toward the back. He motioned that I should read it. When I refused, he said, “This clause binds you to our contract for its duration. Is that your signature below?”

“You know that it is,” I said. “I wish now that I never signed it.”

“Then all I can say is that I am sorry, mademoiselle, but this is business and you did sign a binding contract. Personal feelings are not a factor.”

“Not a factor?” I echoed, and I felt my self-control disintegrate, so that I gripped the edge of my desk until my fingers hurt. “It most certainly is a factor.
My
feelings are everything.”

“Perhaps in how you choose to run your boutiques,” he replied, turning even calmer as he watched my outrage increase. “But not in how we run
Bourjois. If that were the case, we’d never make a profit on anything we—”

“You conniving crook,” I hissed, cutting him off. “How dare you sit there and tell me that my feelings mean nothing? Your company reaps a fortune off my name! I will not stand for it.” I stabbed my hand at him. “Your contract is invalid; I signed it without realizing what I was doing. You will give me my fair share or I will see you in court.”

His expression hardened. “Insulting me will not avail you, mademoiselle. With all due respect, I find such words beneath you.” He came to his feet, leaving the contract on the desk. “You may consult with your lawyer Chambrun or whomever else you like. It will not change a legal contract. And,” he said, “I now feel compelled to warn you that as majority shareholders in Les Parfums Chanel, we have the right to protect ourselves.”

“Protect yourselves?” I was shuddering with fury, so much so that I almost leaped around the desk to yell in his face. “Are you
threatening
me?”

“I merely warn you, as I have said. If you persist in bringing suit against us, we can remove you from the board of directors.”

It was too much. Flinging my hand across the desk, I swept his contract and several other items from its surface, tumbling paper and pens and bric-a-brac to the carpet as I brandished a letter opener and shouted, “Do so and you will regret it. You have my word!”

He inclined his head, taking up his case and hat. “Perhaps,” he said, and he turned on his heel to depart, though he was a brave man indeed to show his back, for I was within seconds of plunging the letter opener into it.

Instead, he left me panting at my desk like a cornered animal. I grabbed up the phone to call my lawyer René. “Sue them! I want the contract voided. Take them to court, file as many legal injunctions as you think necessary. I never want to do business with them again.”

He could not do it. Instead, René telephoned me a week later to say that the Wertheimers had indeed removed me from the board as president and filed a countersuit against me for defamation, which now required months of wrangling to overturn. I vowed that I would take my revenge. Come what may, I would disentangle myself from Pierre Wertheimer if it was the last thing I did. No one owned me; I had built my wealth with my
own hands, overcoming poverty and other obstacles through sheer force of will. I refused to be held hostage because of some careless oversight. Deep within, I recognized my own irrationality. Years before, Balsan had warned me to be careful, but I’d ignored his advice, signing my perfume contract in haste. This was my fault; but my fear of being exploited, and the bitter seed of Hollywood, as well as my faltering business and fervent anger that my hard work filled someone else’s bank account overwhelmed me. All I could see, all I could think, was that the Wertheimers were thieves.

They had become my enemy.

It was under this noxious cloud of acrimony that I met Paul Iribe. Bendor introduced him, though he was already familiar to me by reputation—a Basque caricaturist, he had illustrated Poiret’s fashion catalogs until his second marriage to an heiress allowed him to expand into interior design. Bendor was a fan of his magazine
Le Témoin,
which Iribe had founded before the war but now languished, out of print.

“You should help him relaunch it,” Bendor suggested. “He has a brand-new concept for it and you keep saying you need a new venture. Why not this? I predict it’ll be very popular.”

He knew exactly how to hook me, Bendor did; and so I agreed to meet Iribe at his new shop on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, not far from my residence.

The man who came to greet me was thickset and short as Jojo Sert, if less sallow in his complexion—hardly handsome by any measure, though his dark eyes were piercing behind his wire-rim glasses, and he exuded an extraordinary charisma that he knew how to wield.

His designs were exquisite, in particular his jewelry, which I lingered over in his display cases, entranced by its baroque style. “They are commissions for the International Guild of Diamond Merchants,” he explained. “If you like, I will recommend you to them, made-moi-selle.” He enunciated every syllable in a modulated tone that made me think he had gone to some pains to disguise the fact that Catalan, not French, was his native tongue.

“Whatever for?” I said. “As beautiful as these are, who can possibly afford gems now?” Yet even as I spoke, I found myself considering his
offer, urged by his next pronouncement: “With the name of Chanel on the pieces, who could afford
not
to afford them?”

I nodded, thinking it would come to nothing. He was clearly being flirtatious, promising whatever he could to press his agenda. He proceeded to show me illustrations for his new proposed edition of
Le Témoin,
along with sample text. I winced as I read it; I should have guessed, given that Bendor was a fan. Iribe’s rhetoric was fervently nationalistic, promulgating an anti-Marxist view with a strong dose of anti-Semitic hatred. I was not offended, but I wasn’t charmed, either. I told him I must think on it, wondering why he needed me to fund his magazine when he had a wife with money. Then, as I turned to leave, he himself answered my unvoiced question. “I’d like to see you again, mademoiselle. In private.”

Startled by his directness, I turned to him. It had been so long since a man had been that forward—there was no mistaking his intent—that I had a mind to refuse, just to see how he would react. Instead, as his eyes locked on mine, without evasion or apology, I found myself teasing, “Aren’t you married?”

“Yes. Does it matter?”

“It might—to your wife.”

He shrugged. “It might.” He stared at me with an insolence that was almost amusing. “The important thing is, does it matter to you? Because I assure you, it has never mattered to me.”

I had to stifle my laughter. What a cad! But an interesting one, nevertheless. I had always had a fondness—or, as some might say, a weakness—for men who went after what they wanted without fanfare. At my age especially, it was refreshing.

“Let’s see about this commission with the guild first, yes?” I replied, and I sailed from his shop, feeling his gaze boring into me through his display windows.

THE COMMISSION CAME
two weeks later. The guild was overjoyed by my offer and I set myself to designing pieces for a charity benefit. I would
be paid for my work, though not through the sale of any pieces, which were promotional. I recruited Misia to assist me, for she needed something to occupy her time. All she had done since our return to Paris was rattle about her apartment or mine. We took astronomy as our inspiration, scavenging books for ideas. In November, we presented the collection at my home, displayed on wax mannequins in police-guarded vitrines. Thousands queued outside to gawk at the lopsided diamond stars echoing the secret mosaics of Aubazine; the comet-shaped necklace with shower-spray clasp; yellow-gold bracelets and crescent moon barrettes; solar brooches in saffron-hued gems; and cascading tiaras.

Every major newspaper and magazine reported on the exhibit, skyrocketing the price of De Beers stock. My name was again on everyone’s lips. Ingeniously, I had designed the jewelry to mimic my clothes, separates that could be taken apart: the tiaras turned into bracelets, eardrops to brooches, the star-shaped pendants as buckles for shoes or belts. To enhance the prestige of the event, I gave several interviews declaring that “the point of jewelry isn’t to make a woman look rich but to adorn her, which is not the same thing” and “diamonds offer the best value in the smallest package”—a slogan De Beers used to advantage in their advertising.

That evening after everyone left, I invited Paul Iribe to my bed. He proved energetic, rousing a fire I had not felt in years. No one save Boy had done what he did with his fingers and tongue, and he was not satisfied until I was, highlighting the fact that for all our rapport, Bendor and I had not been compatible under the sheets.

Iribe was not so accommodating outside the sheets, however. Despite his gluttony for luxury in all its forms, he despised my home. “You turned it into a museum for the diamond collection and that is how it should remain. So many rooms; so much waste. It’s preposterous, a mausoleum. Do you want to be entombed there among your Chinese screens?”

At the time, we were staying in my suite at the Ritz, as I had emptied my living space for the jewelry show. Once he mentioned it, I realized I had ceased to feel at ease there since my return to Paris and the death of my beloved dogs. My butler Joseph’s wife, Marie, had also died recently, leaving
him a forlorn widower. As with my other homes before it, unwelcome memories had begun to tarnish Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

“If we lived here,” Iribe said, gazing at me from where he stood at the suite windows overlooking the place Vendôme, “we’d be more comfortable. There is no past here, no tokens of former lovers to taunt me. Here, I could even think of marrying you.”

“Marry me?” With an uneasy laugh, I disguised my surprise. “You’re already married.”

“I’ll divorce her.” He stared at me. “I don’t love her. I never have. I want you. And unlike Bendor or your other Englishman, I don’t care about lineage or children.”

It was cruel:
he
was cruel. Remorseless, in fact, especially in his zeal to see France restored to national pride. In his latest issue of
Le Témoin,
he had depicted me as the face of our iconic symbol, la Marianne, lying at the feet of a gravedigger ready to bury France—the gravedigger being our embattled prime minister. I now saw he was sincere in this proposal, as well, opening doors inside me that had remained bolted since the end of my affair with Bendor.

“Or don’t you want to get married?” he said. “If you don’t, I won’t ask again.”

A valid question—even if, as usual, I had no easy answer. In August 1933, I had turned fifty. Did I intend to remain like this for the rest of my life, careening from liaison to liaison until men ceased to notice me? Until now, I had accepted this as my fate: to be wedded to my work and my friends. Iribe was hardly the man I envisioned for a husband; he was as unlike Boy or Bendor as any man could be—common born and uncouth, feral in his ambitions, and scathingly dismissive of what other people thought of him.

Still, I did not want to grow old alone or, God forbid, chained to Misia. Children were out of the question, and in any event, I had my nephew André, who had completed his education and now worked overseeing one of my mills. He and his lovely Dutch wife had even had a daughter, naming her Gabrielle in my honor. Adrienne, too, had settled at the Nexon château
in Limoges. Although she had not managed to get pregnant, she was content, a happy wife and aunt to her husband’s nephews and nieces. To finally have a companion, a husband with whom to share my waning years—how much time did I have before that door, too, closed on me forever?