Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

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People wish their favourite artists were ‘good people’ too, and while I understand that desire, I don’t think people are ever really neatly ‘good’ or ‘bad’,” said filmmaker Hannah Berryman this weekend. “Chanel was of her times, an opportunist and a survivor, which probably influenced her choices.” Further indication that Chanel could have been considered a wartime allied “asset” is provided by her mysterious early release from arrest as a collaborator after the liberation of Paris. Her old friendship with Winston Churchill, formed on the grouse moors of Britain, during the decade she lived with the Duke of Westminster,offers a plausible answer, claims the documentary. Churchill once described Chanel as “fit to rule a man and an empire”. Still, if for no other reason that the pics she shows us and the info she presents on Chanel´s childhood, it is a must read! Chanel rarely talked about her childhood, except to say that early happiness was a handicap to success, but she certainly learned to sew and embroider with the nuns. I think that was the focus of my dislike of the book: very little on the woman herself, with far too much about friends, family, business associates, and acquaintances. I felt the book really could have been considerably shorter, with the cutting of extraneous information.

There is also photographic evidence of her relationships with artists such as Igor Stravinsky, and with famous names of her time such as Dimitri Pavlovich. There is also a rare photograph with Misa Sert, a remarkable woman believed to be Chanel’s lover as well. As you can see, she was really a serious woman when coming down to the business of love and survival. Chanel’s love affairs with cultural figures such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Igor Stravinsky, along with her support of the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, mark her out rather as patron of the arts than a dependent mistress. She gave several of these men places to live as well as financial encouragement. It also gives an interesting glimpse of the lives of several famous and near-famous artists and writers. It is particularly intriguing to read about the time of King Edward VIII abdicating the throne and her wife, Wallis Simpson on the Riviera and about people’s opinions of them. The second part of the book focuses on the Riviera during the Second World War, and we learn that the French considered it practically unthinkable for German troops to breach the Maginot Line and to advance unstoppably towards the holiday paradise. This book covers one aspect of her life. Other biographies explore her career, style or different periods and single relationships. I would like to see one focus on the business. Chanel claims not to be a good businesswoman... despite her phenomenal success. Her contract on Chanel No. 5, seemed to be foolish and unnecessary, and putting Iribe in charge of renegotiation, more foolish yet. Far too many dresses and accessories were created to be the work of just one person. How was the firm run during her long absences? How did the Wertheimers wind up with not just the perfume, but the fashion house as well? The business end of the business remains a mystery to me.The book has an array of names in it who Chanel knew such as Jean Cocteau, Sergei Diaghilev and Salvador Dalí. She also knew Raymond Radiguet, a writer who died at just 20 from tuberculosis. She arranged his funeral which I thought was kind of her. I really liked Raymond from what I read about him. He seemed really great and I would love to look into his work in the future. Other main features of the book are Chanel’s romances, her troubled childhood, her rivalry with Elsa Schiaparelli and her drug use. I love Chanel clothing and there is a lot to like about her as a person but a lot not to. And the balance tips in the favour for me of not liking her. However, I do think she was extremely talented and deserves her place in history as one of fashion’s greats. On the good side as this book shows, she was a working-class, bi woman who worked extremely hard to get to the position she did with class, sexual orientation, romantic orientation and her gender against her. As a working-class, pan, omni woman who knows how hard that is, I will always admire that about her. I liked how she changed up fashion, wore outfits which were masculine and liberated women sexually and romantically. On the other side, I found her elitist once she did make it, not very fair to her workers, homophobic and I do believe she had some involvement in Nazi work so no, overall not my kind of person at all. They had some really interesting material about royals wearing Chanel and her time in London in the 1920s and ’30s, when she started dressing British royalty as well as the British aristocracy,” she says. She also is close friends with the V&A exhibit’s curator Oriole Cullen, and they have long had a relationship of comparing notes. This book gives a very honest picture of Chanel as both as artist and a person. I used to study fashion so I did know quite a bit about her prior to reading this book but I definitely learned a lot more. It’s very indepth. As well as talking about Chanel, the author gives fantastic overviews of the time periods and the attitudes especially in relation to fashion which were popular then. Justine Picardie has spent the last decade puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel, attempting to peel away the accretions of romance and lies. In this critically acclaimed, bestselling biography she shares the history of the incredible woman who created the way we look now.

Woman of many hats: Coco surrounded by models at the Chanel studio. Photograph: Douglas Kirkland/BBC/Whynow/Getty Coco Chanel could be cheerful, lighthearted, and generous; she also could be ruthless, manipulative, even cruel. Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich’s High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, Chanel wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Distrustful of his intentions to set up production on the outskirts of New York City, Chanel fights to seize ownership. The House of Chanel shall not fall. What didn't I like about this book? Where to start? This audio book annoyed me immensely, and I think it may have started with the narrator Cassandra Harwood, whose voice droned through each sentence making it hard to concentrate on the information being presented. I don't speak French, but I can only hope the times she employed that language she did better than with the English, when words were mis-pronounced (e.g. subsidising, instead of subsiding) and there was no attempt at emphasis, or any kind of tonal variance in her speech. Had the text been more interesting, perhaps her voice might not have grated as much, alas ...

In summary, very interesting and well-told story from the standpoint of Gabrielle Chanel, the muse, the inspiratory, the artist Maecenas, instead of the very well-known fashion icon. The book begins with the story of her affair with and love for the Duke of Westminster, which came to an end in 1930. The book tells us why Chanel decided to buy a villa that would be her only real home and how she spent her time there.

Frankly i was wondering if JPicardie didnt get bored/tired/fed up of her subject halfway through the book...a certain partiality in the way she treats some events of Coco´s life, and her decisions, can be felt in some parts of the book. She was buried in Switzerland, NOT France! Why? Did you know that some saw her as a German collaborator in WW2? Did you know that she had a German lover and he was a spy? You need to know more to understand, to decide for yourself why she did what she did. I absolutely detested the narration of the audiobook (by Carole Boyd)! As usual, my star rating is based on the content of the written book, not the narration. I am not lowering the stars for the narration. I detest the dramatics with which the lines are read. Boyd plays with accents. Her French is impeccable - I am talking about the pronunciation of French words and names and places - but the tone she uses is highbrow and downright snobbish. Stuffy! The only accent I enjoyed was that she used for the American characters. Others may like that she uses different tones for different nationalities, but since most is in this fake French tone, it drove me absolutely crazy. I like narrators to just slowly and clearly read the text. I don't want to hear the voice but rather the content of the author’s lines. That is me, maybe you are different. With several decades of work devoted to Chanel’s life, Picardie is clearly personally interested in her —but she remains constantly surprised by how much broad intrigue there is into Chanel’s life. So, yes, Chanel is fascinating. Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, however, is a bit dry. In fact, as I read I couldn't help but feel that it could have been written as a dissertation, something to the effect of the "The Life and Times of Coco Chanel: One Woman's Impact on a Century." It's incredibly well researched and painstakingly thorough but, unlike some books which manage to be this without the reader constantly realizing it. In this book, the research can sometimes drag down each dense paragraph, threatening to crush them under its weight. I will say, though, that when it comes to descriptions of Europe - particularly life in France in the 19th century when peasants still spoke patois, or in either of the pre-/post- war periods - the research does pay dividends.

Chanel as always been - and will remain - an enigma, no matter how many attempts are made, book or movie form, no one will ever get a real understanding of the woman behind the myth. This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in Chanel, fashion or this period. what most reviewers here have said - but it's the best book on Chanel I've read. It's full of information, easy to read, and it paints a picture of the deeply complex woman and her times. I recommend it totally. Anne de Courcy states in her prologue that her book is neither a biography of Coco Chanel nor a history of the Riviera, as both themes have been explored in multiple books. The author just intended to tell the story of the fourteen years when Chanel summered on the Riviera. duchess на английски, но не и на български за руската титла). Но хайде, бели кахъри, преводът е много добър, просто финалната редакция на текста не е на нивото на визуалните материали. Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family years before, they’ve grown up under the guidance of pious nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.