Coco Chanel had no precursors in fashion. Her forerunners were religious fanatics, the ascetic souls who scourge themselves and their societies so as to bring about a new freedom. “I loved what was beautiful and loathed prettiness,” Chanel said. In her severity, her implacability, her hatred of every compromise, she was a perfect Savonarola, a Calvin who conquered Paris.
Her puritanism is on display in The Allure of Chanel, a book written by her friend Paul Morand in 1946, over a series of winter evenings at a hotel in St Moritz. Each evening Chanel would offer her venomous observations in conversation, and Morand would retire to his room to set them down. It is a startling book. The edition I have is illustrated by Karl Lagerfeld, and after his death I once again picked it up. Chanel emerges, in her own words, as “the Léon Bloy of couture”.
