Justine Picardie Discusses Coco Chanel's Many Lovers, Permeating Fragrance and Ever-Present Ghost
Justine Picardie, author of new Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel biography, “Chanel: Her Life” has a deep connection to the designer: “It all goes back to my mother's Chanel N°5.” Her recently released book brought Picardie on a series of adventures as she explored previously unstudied areas of Chanel’s life including a fishing trip to Scotland with Winston Churchill and the Duke of Westminster, her cross-country trip from New York to Los Angeles and the Aubazine orphanage where Chanel grew up.
One of Picardie’s adventures took her to the home of Gabrielle Labrunie, the 85-year-old grand-niece (and possible grand-daughter) of Coco Chanel, “I went to Paris to see Gabrielle Labrunie and I ended up staying the night there. She took me down this long corridor and opened the door and there was a row of original Chanel couture and this was Chanel’s original clothes. ‘Just try something on,’ she said, but I thought ‘this is sacrilege!’ so I tried on a coat of the softest cashmere tweed and I put that away and then I tried on a cream coat with black trim she's wearing in a photo we have in the book put my hands in pocket. In the pocket there were gloves that smelled of Chanel N°5. I thought it was an aural hallucination, but Gabrielle said the smell followed her everywhere.”
Chanel N°5 isn’t the only remnant of Coco that followed Picardie throughout the ten years she spent writing the book: the ghost of Chanel herself felt ever present. While writing at the Ritz in Paris, the hotel Chanel lived and died in, the lights began flickering as if Chanel was asking Picardie to write while watching over her. The ghost of Chanel even sent her a new boyfriend... but that's all for Picardie's next book.
Take a peek at Lagerfeld's sketches, which appear throughout the book, below:
Chanel: Her Life by Justine Picardie is currently for sale by Steidl for $58.00 http://www.steidlville.com/books/1244-Chanel-Her-Life.html.
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