It's OK for intellectual feminists to like fashion

29th January 2012

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Interview translation: Coco Chanel on fame, trousers, creativity and the Moon

Coco Chanel, aged 86, must have been the dream interviewee*. Sometimes after 20 July 1969, she answered journalist and TV presenter Micheline Sandrel’s questions in an organised stream of consciousness manner. The interview is now available on You Tube in two parts (Part 1, Part 2 - I’m having embedding issues), via French TV archives institute INA.

With a granny eye on society and an unedited tendency to piss on her time, she had the decisiveness of a successful business woman who’s seen it all but doesn’t necessarily understand the world round her. Dressed in a caricature-defying monochrome outfit and costume jewellery, she proclaimed her hatred of knees, short skirts, gossip, Moon trips, trousers and rude people.

Coco Chanel: I saw that three days ago in the street. A man slapping a woman. She deserved it. I’d been watching them for a while, thinking that if she didn’t shut up, he’d slap her. And he did.

ON BEING A FAMOUS COUTURIER

Micheline Sandrel: Do people recognise you in the street and talk to you?

Coco Chanel: Yes. Often, too often to my taste, I find it tiring. People coming over to say hello. No I don’t know them, I’m sure I’ve never seen them, but you have to pretend to be polite, shake their hand… People I’m with ask me who they are… I don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? No I don’t know. They seem to know you really well. If it pleases them, so be it, but I can sure I don’t know them.

[Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON TROUSERS 

Coco Chanel: These girls, you dress them in trousers, they become vulgar, I don’t know why. Maybe because they feel they need to waddle. I stop her, tell her not to walk like that, take the trousers off her, put them on another girl, exactly the same result.

In the countryside you wear trousers, it’s the most useful thing, you don’t get cold, you can get a bit wet it doesn’t matter. I came up with them nearly 20 years ago. I came up with them by modesty, because I find wearing a swimsuit on the beach similar to walking around naked. Once you’ve bathed, even if you want to stay on the beach, putting on trousers isn’t that difficult. A skirt isn’t pretty, a robe is awful, trousers are the best option. You can roll around in the sand all day long. But from this usage to it becoming a fashion, having 70% of women wearing trousers at evening dinner is quite sad.

Micheline Sandrel: Don’t you think it looks good on all women?

Coco Chanel: No, no. It suits very young people. After a certain age, it looks like you put them on to look younger. Nothing is more aging than trying to look younger, it’s the stupidest thing a woman can do, thinking “if I’m wearing trousers, I’ll look younger than if I’m wearing a skirt”.

We live in a weird period. Women are becoming I don’t know what… the other sex… I don’t know how you do that. Wearing trousers doesn’t change their face. You need trousers, I’ll make trousers. We don’t like skirts anymore, we like trousers so I’ll make some. This shows how much I’ve changed because two years ago I would have said: “to hell with what they need, they can do whatever they want, I won’t make trousers”.

[cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON HER CREATIVE PROCESS

Micheline Sandrel: How do you manage to be both varied and true to yourself in your creative process?

Coco Chanel: If you move away from style, you have to start over and over again, it’s impossible. Unfortunately, this is what is happening at the moment. Some couturiers are really good couturiers but they change every week, and this is the reason why I’ve created my own style. I couldn’t do it if I had to come up with something new every week, you end up creating very ugly thing.

ON THE FUTURE OF FRENCH FASHION 

If we were protected a little bit, we’d keep some prestige. I have the feeling we’re loosing prestige. We lost Couture last year to the Italians, we didn’t do a thing to fight it. The Italians, you see, organise [Fashion] Week very well. They have officials, but where do you find them, you don’t find them in the street, it’s a former ambassador, who looks after Couture. He’s a well-bred, charming man who thought that if you’re going to get all those people over, you might as well entertain them throughout their stay, open La Scala, hire people, try to entertain the fashion crowd. What are we doing in France? Zero. We take them to see naked men, since it’s new and interesting.

Female fashion used to be always made in France, always. And the biggest buyers used to be the Russians. All Russians used to dress in Paris, the moment they could afford it, and they had significant means to do so. Now they wear bags. But still it’s better than last year

Micheline Sandrel: Is it? 

Coco Chanel: Yes, a Russian friend of mine went back and told me last year it was misery whereas now it has become a country like any poor country. It’s poor, that’s it. I don’t think France is gaining much standing apart from all that.

 [Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON THE MINI SKIRT AND KNEES 

Coco Chanel: I’ve been fighting all couturiers for the past two years on those shorts dresses. I find them indecent. It’s not in the time you know. To show one’s knees, they need to be perfect, they are an articulation, it’s like showing you elbow. Yes, that’s it, you’d be showing your elbows all day, look how nice my elbows are. It’s awful. Do you know what’s been happening to me? When I walk into restaurants men look at me and applaud me because I’ve spoken against showing one’s knees, that it was awful, pointless and hardly ever pretty and that if they had any idea of what the body is like, they’d know if you have bad knees you also have bad hips, too large, you’re built to have children. This is not men. This is not what they’d [women] like to have, they’d like to be built like young boys.

I’ve got nothing against knees if they’re pretty. But if they’re not pretty, if you stand rue Cambon all day long, you’ll struggle to find people with good legs. We never thought they had such bad legs, knock-knees, too fat, purplish. Oh no it’s awful. And I believe that if you show everything off, you don’t want anything anymore. It’s like people presented with their favourite dish after being force-fed food. They’d say no on that day. It’s a bit like that.

[Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON THE END OF MANNERS

Micheline Sandrel: Your main worry is for women to be beautiful and distinguished.

Coco Chanel: For her to be habillée [means well dressed, elegant, classy], for her to be dressed like a woman. It’s a frightful, scary mélange. Paris is losing its prestige. It’s becoming vulgar whereas it didn’t use to be. It used to be ravishing. There should be some protocol for dinner time… Everything is going South in France, you invite people for dinner at 8pm, they turn up at 10pm and can’t see what’s wrong with it. It also means you eat badly. France used to have this privilege of eating very well, now you eat badly. In which kind of house would you cook if you invite people for dinner at 8pm, which is a reasonable time, 8pm, everyone is there at 8.15pm, perfect, à table, you can have dinner and then go out for a bit if you wish. But this changes too depending on fashion, you only need having a woman deciding to eat at 10pm at her’s and everyone will dine at 10.30pm to be more chic than her. It’s that stupid. We’re drowning in bottomless stupidity at the moment and it really bothers me because I believe stupidity to be the worst. You can forgive anything except stupidity and these are stupid things

[Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON HER CUSTOMERS

I’ve got a really, really beautiful clientèle. This is the only thing I’m truly proud of. I’m convinced there isn’t a house in France with a clientèle like mine. From all around the world you understand, the best from all around the world and I don’t blush saying so, it’s bold to say so with such confidence but it’s the truth. You can check it, I believe anyone who dresses well in the world dresses here. There are few houses you see where women come from the US to order their dresses. They want to rest, they’ve been to a spa, they don’t want to hear about going out, no, they’re here to order their dresses, they know how to dress. Perfect. Everyone knows what they want, we tell them how many days essayages will take. I’m going back to the US, I’ll be back on that day to try it on, and they turn up as scheduled. We’ve sometimes forgotten they were scheduled to come but they always do. Women come to try their dresses because they want to try their dresses twice, then they take them away and that’s it, no bother, the Americans are good, very good customers.

[Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON GOSSIP 

I’ve never heard of a time when people badmouthed each other as much as they do now, it’s scary. It’s because they’ve got nothing to say so they make up gossip on a family, on anything to try to disgrace them but I think it’s really hard to damage reputations nowadays, no one listens anymore. You still have women acting up at dinner, fainting, you scoop them back up… 

[She rearranges her hat]

ON YOUTH AND TV

Micheline Sandrel: What do you think of this cult of youth? It feels like we’ve just discovered youth. 

Coco Chanel: Eighteen-year-old people know that, we need their opinion because only these people talk about that. It’s very centered on the fashion microcosm, on the moneyed microcosm where we talk of nothing else. There are two topics of conversation, money, women, two topics, money… Nothing serious, futility all day long, no matter what you do. Stupidity in fact, I find it very stupid.. Don’t you think television dumbs people down too? I doubt you’ll say so but I think it dumbs down people, even me, all these programmes, even if they’re not too good, I can’t do without them anymore. If I’m alone, it’s always on.

ON LANDING ON THE MOON 

Micheline Sandrel: From time to time, it allows us to reach the Moon

Coco Chanel: I didn’t actually, it was an evening I was tired and I’m quite glad I didn’t get up, I heard so much about it the next day, I heard about nothing but that all day long. Do you really want to know what happens up there? You’ll never know. It will generate a lot of literature, it will be good for some people, newspapers sold really well for 48 hours but why does it matter to us, we know full well we won’t go to the Moon. And why would we go? Why do we want to be more than human? No one has gone before, why would the French go? Or the Russians, or anyone else? I’m really not interested in it. It’s to entertain the masses; you don’t see the rottenness behind it all. It’s all about money, only money. We’re in a time of scientists speaking to ignoramus. So you listen to them as you listen to catechism, not believing a word of it. I don’t believe it. Do you believe it? Do you believe we’re going to build little huts up there and that there will be regular planes three times a week? It’s all becoming absurd you see. It’s against religion, it’s against everything, when there will be no more religion you won’t be able to keep people in check anymore, voici le temps des assassins [“here comes the time of assassins”, a line from Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Matinée d’Ivresse in Illuminations as well as a 1956 movie by Julien Duvivier with Jean Gabin], a great poet said so and we’re getting close to it. What are our foundations? There’s no moral, no modesty, nothing, there’s only money to talk about, and eat good and bad food. And dream we’ll go to the Moon. What for?

[Cut to footage of a Chanel show]

ON HER WEIGHT

Coco Chanel: I’m telling jokes, I’m telling jokes not to talk about myself because I’m not an important enough character. I’d be glad to have a few kilos more, I can’t catch them no matter how hard I try. I can eat, not eat, it doesn’t matter, I’ve never put on weight, I’m not made to fatten up, I’ve made to loose weight. I’ll give you an example immediately, look at my skirt. With this collection, I’ve worked myself like crazy and I’ve lost that much [she show her skirt which has become too big].

ON HER PERSONAL WARDROBE

Micheline Sandrel: One last question. You have this suit, this Chanel on you, what else do you have nowadays in your own wardrobe?

Coco Chanel: Two suits I’ve had for three years, a beige one and the one I wore yesterday, with a small pattern, three is good. I have a brand new one, all white, which I’ll wear to the collection.

*This public service translation of a 1969 interview of Coco Chanel was brought to you following a request from Canadian illustrator, trend theorist and brunch companion Danielle Meder of Final Fashion. I don’t owe any of the original material but the translation is all mine.

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