COCO – LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE

A story about rags to riches, Gabrielle Bonheur “” Chanel had led a very fascinating life. Out of the many books, documentaries etc, : The legend and the life by Justine Picardie give a very detailed idea about the personality of Ms.

Chanel. After reading the book, the five main personality traits that I found are emotional stability (neuroticism), honesty, narcissism, openness to experience and extraversion.

Chanel’s childhood was very disruptive and hard. Her mother died when she was 11 and her father was a usually absent throughout her childhood. After her mother’s death she was shipped off to an orphanage. From the book, there many instances were she talks about killing herself thus making me believe that she had low emotional stability. “’At the time, I often used to think about dying,” she told Paul

Morand. ‘The idea of causing a great fuss, of upsetting my aunts, of letting everyone know how wicked they were, fascinated me. I dreamt about setting fire to the barn.’”,

Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 459-460), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. Another dialog she told to one of her close confidants, “’in that part of the world, though, I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself I don’t know how many times.’” Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 294-295), HarperCollins, Kindle

Edition. Chanel’s erratic behavior has been one constant thing throughout her life; in fact she was a person who was often called passionate. But later on in her life she became quite ‘cold’, “‘But I’ve wept so much,’ she said to Delay. ‘Now I don’t cry any more. When you don’t cry, it’s because you no longer believe in happiness.’” Coco

Chanel (Kindle Locations 2325-2326), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition.

Chanel had a habit of mixing truth with fabricated stories, especially about her childhood. “If she made up stories from then on, you can understand why; for out of these loose threads, Gabrielle created an image of herself.”, Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 419-420), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. I think it’s safe to say that she wasn’t high in honesty. Even her story about her first meeting with Etienne Balsan, one of the most influential people in her life, was a mix of truth and fable. “Claude

Delay heard a more embellished tale of Chanel encountering Etienne Balsan at a

Vichy tea party… In this gothic account, Chanel told Balsan that she had been beset by bad luck ever since the death of her mother and her father’s departure to

America, and announced to him that she was going to kill herself: ‘All through my childhood I wanted to be loved. Every day I thought about how to kill myself. The viaduct, perhaps …’ Despite this somewhat unorthodox introduction, Balsan was sufficiently intrigued to provide a different way out by inviting her to see his stables and house, a former abbey named Royallieu.”, Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 536-

540), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. She wasn’t even honest about her most successful venture, Chanel No5 perfume. “When Chanel befriended Bettina Ballard

(then a young American editor working in the Paris office of Vogue), she related the tale of N°5 without mentioning , despite the fact that he had become technical director of Les Parfums Chanel in 1924. ‘She concocted Chanel N°5 when she was trying to recover in the south of France in the Twenties from the accidental death of Boy Capel,’ wrote Ballard.” Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 1402-1405),

HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. This was not truth. What actually happened was that

Ernest Beaux was the one who came up with different scents one of which was No5 and Coco Chanel’s only role was picking that from a bunch of perfumes.

People working under her have commented that she used to be quite tyrannical. There was even an incident were in retaliation of a strike by her employees; she used the war (world war II) as an excuse to shut down her stores causing almost 3000 worker to lose their jobs. She didn’t care much about anyone else, but exceptions were her ‘great love affairs’. She often lied about her age, giving us a glimpse about her narcissistic nature. “She was less willing to remember the year of her birth, 1883, adjusting it when it suited her purposes; even tearing it out of her passport. My age varies according to the days and the people I happen to be with,’ she told a young American journalist in 1959, when she was 76. ‘When I’m bored I feel very old, and since I’m extremely bored with you, I’m going to be a thousand years old in five minutes …’”, Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 96-98),

HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. The book also showed her need for attention when she fabricated stories such as, “She also imagined herself as her father’s favorite. ‘I didn’t so much love as want to be loved,’ she told Delay. ‘So I loved my father because he preferred me to my sister. I couldn’t have borne for him to feel the same about us both.’” Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 257-258), HarperCollins, Kindle

Edition. One her famous quote is "There have been several Duchesses of

Westminster. There is only one Chanel.” Chanel had many fantasies of romance, maybe to distract her from her hard childhood. “She spun a story of romance, telling

Delay of the time she was given a present of rose-scented soap by one of her boy cousins”, Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 358-359), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. I think it were these fantasies that drove her to do something to get out of the poor life she was stuck in. She was quite driven in her aim to leave a mark of herself in the pages of history. She may have had her fantasies of romance but she usually used people for her own gain.”She used Reverdy to hone herself, in her ongoing act of self-creation, so that she dazzled…“, Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 1315-1316),

HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. Another quote from the book which demonstrates her narcissistic trait, “Chanel described it thus to Paul Morand: ‘I have employed society people, not to indulge my vanity or to humiliate them (I would take other forms of revenge, supposing I were seeking them), but … because they were useful to me and because they got around Paris, working on my behalf.’, Coco Chanel (Kindle

Locations 1912-1913), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition.

With her talents in sewing and quite a lot of experience working as seamstress, Chanel had tools to be an Established Couturière. She had always set herself apart from the crowd, “With bobbed hair and Chanel was neither slave girl nor wife, but something of her own making.” Coco Chanel (Kindle

Locations 981-982), HarperCollins, Kindle Edition. When found an opportunity she seized it, by becoming a licensed milliner. Her personal experience has led her to be inventive as shown in this incident in her life, “she couldn’t close its fastenings –

Coco was undone in public – and didn’t have an evening coat to cover herself up. At that moment, she vowed never to wear corsets again.” Coco Chanel (Kindle

Locations 729-731), HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. These experiences gave birth to her most iconic dresses. She was quite tolerant with diverse people; in fact her doctor was Jewish. Her creativity, her diversity makes her high in openness to experiences.

Her multiple lovers, her multiple sources of friends portrays as an extravert.

She was always surrounded by people from the age of 18 years onward. Maybe to compensate for her lonely childhood but later on she was with someone, even into her old age (it ranged from friends, family, lovers, confidantes etc) She never married but had strings of lovers each whom she claimed was her great love. “She transformed them into something new and uniquely her own, eventually building an empire upon the desire of other women to possess her creations; women who sought her, Coco Chanel” Coco Chanel (Kindle Locations 749-750), HarperCollins,

Kindle Edition. To think of Coco Chanel is to think of sophistication. Her low honesty with high openness to experience could term her as a snobbish sophistication or her high narcissism might not make her a favorite to everyone but for me, I would say that the woman was a legend; for she with her personality and intellect was able to create a name which is still to date is synonyms to fashion.