“Coco Before Chanel” depicts legend in the making
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009By Nadine Kam
Sony Pictures photos
Audrey Tautou as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in tweeds, while her sister Adrienne, played by Marie Gillain, wears lace.
“Coco Before Chanel” finally opens in Honolulu a little more than a month after its New York debut on Sept. 25.
I remember the date because I wanted to see it but was bummed because that was the day I had to leave NY. I did see “It Might Get Loud” and “The September Issue” while I was there because I didn’t know when they would arrive in Hawaii. (Both were playing when I got home, thanks to Consolidated Kahala, which is also showing the film about the young Chanel.)
I fell asleep during the movie about the making of Vogue’s September 2007 issue. It felt too much like work, with all the same anxieties, second guessing and frustrations, and it just made me tired. So I never did get to see what happened with Grace Coddington’s spread, though I did find her work inspiring.
“Coco Before Chanel” is also about inspiration, with Audrey Tautou in the title role of the young Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.
Those hoping to see fashion on par with “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” will get about 5 minutes of it at the end of the film, but otherwise, the film covers only the first half of her life.
Audrey Tautou as Chanel, dressed like a man at a costume party.
It was funny to see the cabaret scenes during which Gabrielle picked up the name “Coco.” The film has her singing a song about a search for a lost dog named Coco, alledgedly for which she could not shake the connection. I was reminded of what photographer Douglas Kirkland told me during a brief interview earlier this year when his photos of the designer were shown at Chanel Waikiki. He said, “If you knew her, you called her Mademoiselle, not Coco. She hated that. She had a short career as a cabaret singer — not a very successful one. Coco was her stage name.”
Chanel, born in 1883, came of age during the Belle Epoque, the “Beautiful Era,” the decades leading up to World War II, when the European world was at peace and the upper classes enjoyed prosperity and all the toys new technology produced.
Chanel had been left at an orphanage at age 12 by her father after her mother died. To earn her keep, she learned to become a seamstress. As one of society’s have-nots, Chanel is portrayed by Tautou as a self-possessed, impudent young woman who was resentful of the privileged class, as well as advantages of being a man, and fought against inequity in her own fashionable way.
The movie shows Balsan giving the young Chanel a dress, but when confronted with such confections, her impulse is to start ripping out flowers and simplifying matters.
The resourceful young designer is shown using materials at hand — shirts, jackets and ties from her paramour Étienne Balsan’s closet — to fashion attire for herself and foreshadow her later reputation for adapting menswear for women.
She is depicted saying she favors simplicity and comfort of menswear over the corsets, bustles and petticoats of the other women in Balsan’s circle. Whether this was true or just a matter of necessity, resourcefulness and acceptance is anyone’s guess.
By today’s standard, the outfits she put together — such as a Chaplinesque ensemble of white vest, black jacket, dress shirt with French cuffs and cropped black pant — are adorable. Perhaps, as a woman, she had less of a tendency to objectify or fetishize women the way a male designer might. But at the time, the clothes she presented must have seemed clownish and outrageous, as happens when an individual is ahead of the curve. Jersey that she used as outerwear for instance, had been thought of as suitable only for underwear.
Chanel dines with the love of her life, Arthur “Boy” Capel, played by Alessandro Nivola, who financed her millinery shop in Brittany. While watching the movie, my eyes were on her dress, so I didn’t notice the camellia he’s wearing, until now.
That was a point made by Arthur “Boy” Capel, who called her an anarchist during a stroll along the beach, where they observed society women lounging and playing while wearing large, lacey picture hats, which Chanel scornfully described as “meringues on their heads.”
By the 1920s, a new slim shape with fewer underpinnings was changing the world of women’s fashion, and war years demanded more practical attire for women. No designer creates in a vacuum, and I’m guessing an overall revolution in women’s wear and growing women’s movement also helped shape her philosophies. She had to be tough and smart to make it in a man’s world when, to this day, all the major French couture houses bear the names of their male creators.
On another side note, the film shows both Chanel and Balsan wearing sleeveless tweed jackets. The sleeveless look will be back this spring in the Dior Homme collection. I got an early look at the collection — which also includes jackets with sleeves — while in New York. I can’t think of many men in Hawaii who will rush for this look, but, if 2010 proves to be as hot as 2009, it makes practical sense! You have four months to warm up to the look.
Nadine Kam photo
Dylan Peckenpaugh of Dior Homme showed me the spring-summer 2010 collection during a preview in New York. The collection features the line’s signature dark suiting, with linen dickeys and vests, plus the new look of sleeveless jackets. Dylan’s from Kauai.
