Founders - #199 Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

What I learned from reading Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----'When my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place; they feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecration of fame.” —Coco Chanel, 1935Her father soon left them, discontented with marriage and fatherhood.The dead are not dead as long as we think of them.I like talking to myself and I don't listen to what I'm told.Gabrielle spent seven years in the orphanage, until she was 18. Her father never returned to see her or her siblings.I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself I don't know how many times.And having to hear people call me an orphan! They felt sorry for me. All this was humiliating.She was one of the charity pupils who were provided with a free place, and therefore treated differently to those whose family could afford to pay for their education. It was here, too, that she was given further instruction in how to sew.She sought to define herself by her idiosyncratic choice of clothes.She distanced herself from the past in storytelling. For telling stories is a way in which to imagine a happy-ever-after.What she did want was to earn her own living.They didn't understand how important this was to me.Coco made hats that were stripped of embellishments, of the frills that she dismissed as weighing a woman down.Coco began to edge her way to the centre of attention, elbowing past her rivals and competitors.Paul Poiret, whose fame at the time was such that he dubbed himself the 'King of Fashion', said of Chanel's early days as a milliner, 'We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head. It was going to give us every kind of shock, and produce, out of its little conjuror's hat, gowns and coiffures and jewels and boutiques.’I often fainted. I had too much emotion, too much excitement, I lived too intensely. My nerves couldn't stand it.The House of Chanel seemed to give her stability.I am not here to have fun, or to spend money like water. I am here to make a fortune.She rejoiced in her independence.I was my own master and I depended on myself alone.Chanel was neither slave girl nor wife, but something of her own making.The little black dress wasn't formally identified as the shape of the future until 1926, when American Vogue published a drawing of a Chanel design, and announced: 'Here is a Ford signed Chanel.' It was simple yet elegant sheath, in black, with long narrow sleeves, worn with a string of white pearls; and Vogue proved to be correct in the prediction that it would become a uniform, as widely recognised as a Ford automobile; fast and sleek and discreet.I imposed black; it's still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around.She did not see herself as an artist – she repeatedly described herself as an artisan who 'works with her hand' - and yet her precision and commitment to her craft was reminiscent of Reverdy.Coco was always contrary.Chanel N°5 was the solid foundation of her empire. N°5 was multiplied a million times over - and more, far more - in a dizzying proliferation that made Coco Chanel rich and recognised around the world, so that her name became a brand, and her face as famous as her logo.She surreptitiously sprayed the women who passed their table with the new perfume. “You've got to be able to lead them by the nose.”Each tormented the other at different points in their lives, with such antagonism that Pierre had to employ a full-time lawyer simply to deal with her.She was both a copyist, and much copied.Coco is really strong being fit to rule a man or an Empire. —Winston Churchill, 1927Chanel's deft designs were not without precedents. Nor did she invent its associated fashions. But as was often the case in her career as a designer, she was quick to distil its essence, absorbing it into her own style, and selling it to customers eager for her clothes.It is immoral to play at earning one's living.I am only a little dress-maker, trying to make women young and pretty. These other designers that do the pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand women, they don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, freaks.When I showed it in Paris, I had many critics. They said that I was old-fashioned, that I was no longer of the age. Always I was smiling inside my head, and I thought, I will show them.She devotes her energies to barely noticeable refinements of detail of her suits and dresses.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Those on whom legends are built are their legends, declared Coco Chanel not long before her death, when her face had already become a fixed mass to the world, and her myth apparently impenetrable. She was speaking to Claude Delay. Delay was a young woman at the time, the daughter of a well-known French psychiatrist, but is herself now an eminent psychoanalyst and an expert guide to the labyrinth of secrets and lies that Chanel constructed to conceal the truth of her past. Not that there is ever a single truth in a life, especially for a woman who built a career on refashioning women's ideas of themselves, which may be why Chanel recounted so many different stories about herself, as if in each version something new might emerge out of her

history. I don't like the family, she told Delay. You're born in it, not of it. I don't know anything more terrifying than the family. And so she circled around and about it, telling and retelling the narrative of her youth, remaking history just as she remade the sleeves of a jacket. Unfastening its seams and cutting its threads and then sewing it back together again. Childhood. You speak of it when you're very tired. Because it's a time when you had hopes, expectations. I remember my childhood by heart.

If Chanel's memory did survive intact, she nevertheless obscured her past from others, reshaping its heartaches, smoothing away the rough edges. But she couldn't keep all the details hidden. That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Coco Chanel, The Legend and the Life, and it was written by Justine Bacardi. Okay, so this is my second time reading a biography of Coco Chanel. There's two primary reasons why I needed to read another one. In addition to her being one of the most successful entrepreneurs to ever live and maybe creating one of the best or not maybe definitely creating one

of the best well known brands that has ever existed in human history. But the primary reason is that the book I covered all the way back on Founders No. 64, that was a book that was published right after she died. And I had an original copy. So that book was published first in 1972. And the copy I had smelled like it was published in 1972. I had to make sure I read that book in a well-ventilated area. But since that book was published, a lot of new information has come out. And so the book I hold in my hand is published in 2010, nearly 40 years after Coco Chanel died. And it has more information than the first book I did all the way back on Founders No. 64.

And then the second part that I found that just blew my mind when I started reading about Coco Chanel the first time was the deal that she was able to make for herself in the 1940s after fighting with her business partners, the ones she was collaborating with for almost two decades at that point, on the production of her perfume. So Chanel No. 5, which from a financial perspective has to be one of the most successful products ever created. So the deal she winds up working out, and remember this is in the 1940s for the numbers I'm about to tell you, she gets 2% of all the sales of Chanel No. 5 and all the other perfumes. That estimated to pay her $25 million a year in the 1940s. And I've seen some estimates that in later years, she was making as much as

$50 million a year. This is going to make her one of the richest people, excuse me, one of the richest women in the world at the time. Plus, and this is where the deal was even crazier. So she's getting all that money, right? They're managing the company. She doesn't have to manage the company anymore. Plus the company has to pay all of her living expenses, from the most minute detail all the way to the largest expenditure, houses, cars, everything else. So that $25 million, that $30 million, that $50 million, depending on how much sales was done that year, is essentially all profit. She has no expenses for the rest of her life. And that deal was made in the 1940s. She doesn't die until 1971.

And so when I sit down and think of Coco Chanel, I think of, okay, this is one of the most successful entrepreneurs to ever live. She created some of the most successful products. She's one of the most famous names in history, and she created one of the most famous brands in history. How does somebody that grew up in an orphanage do that? And so with that, I want to jump right into the book. Here's a quote at the very beginning. And one way I think that is really important to learn from Chanel is the fact that she understood at a fundamental level, the importance of storytelling and how stories can change the world around you. This is a quote, she's gonna she's about 45 years old when she said this quote. And she says,

when my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place. They feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them they are privileged characters it's really important that she uses that word because she's telling explicitly this is a story that i made a myth a legend that i've made a brand is another way to think about that uh that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them, this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecration of fame.

So consecration is a word that you come across all the time. I've read it a number of times. You can kind of put together what it means through context clues or whatever the case may be. But I think it's important to define it. She's saying, what is the definition of consecration? The act of making something sacred. Legend is the consecration of fame. And I think that quote gives us an insight into how she thought about what the word Chanel meant. You're not a customer, you're a character in this story, in this fantasy land that I'm creating for you. I'm not just producing a product, I'm creating a fantasy land,'m creating for you. I'm not just producing a

product. I'm creating a fantasy land, an experience for you, one you can interact with and live inside. So this idea of creating stories, of realizing that reality is much more malleable than most people think, I think is central at understanding how Chanel went from the orphanage to becoming this legendary character and brand. So let's go to the beginning of her life, though. It goes back to the introduction when I referenced, hey, there's some details that she could not keep hidden. We do know when she was born, although she would lie about her age and all kinds of things throughout her entire life.

But this is the facts of what's known about her birth. Her mother gave birth to Gabriel on August 19th, 1883. It was in a poorhouse in France. Her mother is 20. Her father is 28. They were not married, but had already had one other daughter named Julia, who was about a year older than Chanel. She was born in a hospice of the poor, which was run by an order of nuns. Her parents were essentially nomads. They call them interant market traders. Think of them as traveling peddlers. They would sell buttons and bonnets and aprils and overalls and things like that from town to town. And she had one habit as a young girl I want to bring to your attention that seems rather bizarre. She would like to play inside of graveyards and cemeteries. So it says by the age of six, she was spending as much time as possible in a graveyard. Every child has a special place where he or she likes to hide, play and dream, she said.

I was the queen of this secret garden. I loved its subterranean dwellers. The dead are not dead as long as we think of them, I would tell myself. I wanted to be sure that I was loved, but I lived with people who showed no pity. So this is an indication of why you would escape to a graveyard. She had an extremely unhappy childhood. And actually, after I finish reading this paragraph here, I'm going to skip all the way to the end of the book because I got to tell you right before she died what her greatest regret was. But this is like a fundamental understanding. It's like this unhappy childhood. Her mother's going to die. Her father dips out. She's raised

in an orphanage. She's essentially, and I think this ties into now that I've read two biographies on her, why she was so focused on her business and so determined to make it successful. It's what gave her freedom. She says, I wanted to be sure that I was loved, but I live with people who showed no pity. I like talking to myself and I don't listen to what I'm told. This is probably due to the fact that the first people to whom I opened my heart were the dead. So let me contrast that with, this is on one of the last pages of the book. This is her main regret right before she dies. This is a few months before she dies one shouldn't live alone she'd say or she said it's a mistake i used to think i had to make my life on my own but i was wrong in that fierce independence that she maintains her entire

life um she does talk about you know having a, not having a family. I think it has to do with the fact that, you know, her early life was so terrible. Her mom is going to die when Coco is 11, but she was sick for many, many years. So it says Chanel was to claim that her mother died of tuberculosis, which was not necessarily an accurate diagnosis of what killed her. Poverty, pregnancy, and pneumonia were likely to blame. And so it's at this point that she's taken to the orphanage. And we're going to see her conditions, why if you went through this yourself, you'd probably be wary of other humans and saying, hey, it's very clear that I have to rely on myself.

Everybody that I've been around has either died or not loved me. You know, she has a lot of armor up throughout her life. So it says, and what's crazy is they had like five or six kids, and they're all dispersed. So it says the boys were left elsewhere. They were deposited, and this is crazy is they had like five or six kids and they're all dispersed. It says the boys were left elsewhere. They were deposited. And this is why her father is such a scumbag. The boys were left elsewhere, deposited with a peasant family. They were found in foundings used as unpaid labor. And then the three girls were handed over to the nuns who ran an orphanage. The children's father promptly disappeared. Now she describes, and this

is where, you know, a lot of, and this is the same thing in the first book I read on her, but a lot of, you have to like kind of uncover the truth of what she says. Cause she doesn't call them nuns. She calls them her aunts. She was not related to them. My aunts were good people, but absolutely without tenderness. I was not loved. I got no affection. Children suffer from such things. She's an 11-year-old girl when this is happening. I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself. And she's also deeply ashamed of the fact that she's an orphan. They might be going to church or other places and they describe her as this orphan. And having to hear people call me an orphan, they felt sorry me all of this was humiliating I realized no one loved me and I was being kept

out of charity Chanel spent seven years in the orphanage until she was 18 her father never returned to see her or her siblings and so they're talking about later in life she really did not like looking back she hated speaking of this sometimes she let things tumble out, though. Chanel did allow some stories to slip out. She spoke of being taught to sew. That was extremely important because this is going to be her occupation. Also, how she starts making money as a young person. Even when she's 18, she starts getting a job as a seamstress.

And then she talks about being beaten. She says she remembered her reddened skin when her aunts beat her I remember that they used to take my knickers down to spank me and then she'd say at the bottom there'd be some blood and she had this fascination with this color red throughout her entire life

but this is the main point of why I'm telling you all this because the note of myself is instead of retelling her life story she did something which i think is actually smart she created a new one a story that she could control and that's a main theme of her life and career as well if she made up stories from then on you can understand why for out of these loose threads chanel created an image of herself and a way to think of that is like i can't control the bad things i can't control the fact that my mother died my father

left that i grew up in an orphanage but I can control and influence how other people are going to see me moving forward in my life. family money she's extremely poor so this she wants to being a charity case that obviously bothers her as well she was one of the charity pupil pupils who were provided with a free place and therefore treated differently than those whose family could afford to pay for their education here was the chanel who was dismissed as a little peasant the kind of girl who might be made to feel inferior to those who had piano lessons a girl who had to wear a plain pauper's uniform with secondhand shoes rather than the more expensive outfits of the fee pangs of the people the the students that had families everybody afford it it was here too that she was given further instructions and how to sew she has to work so not only like the the tuition is dedicated it's like donated by like they take some people

in that can't afford to pay but they also make they treat them differently but they make them work so this is going to i think it was like maybe founders 179 somewhere back there it was the king of madison avenue it's like one of the third or fourth book i've done on david olgovie and olgovie was a charity case as well um it's very interesting like how driven olgovie winds up being one of my personal heroes that's why i keep reading books about him because i think the guy is very fascinating. I think when Warren Buffett called him a genius, Warren was dead on. But Ogilvy winds up having this insane drive later in his life, and he talks about it freely. He was in a rush to be unbelievably rich, right?

And part of that I think has to do with the fact that his dad didn't do well, so he was sent to this school. I think this was in Scotland. It might be in England. I can't remember exactly. I'm going to read a quote though, because it's very similar to what's happening here. And the parallel just jumped out at me when I read this section of Coco and this Chanel biography. So it says, Ogilvy remembered the day that Mrs. Wilkes refused to let him buy a peach, reminding him that he was poor and attending on a scholarship. How dare you, she shouted, loud enough for the whole school to hear. Your father is so poor that we are obliged to keep you here for almost nothing. What right has the son of a pauper

to spend money on luxuries like peaches? So just imagine being a smart, driven person like a Coco Chanel or a David Olguveen to have other people, when you're a young person in your life, you have no assets, you have little control of your life, to have other older people speak to you and treat you this way. That's going to burn the fire that you already have in your belly to make sure that no one can ever talk to you that way, to push them, to run away from the shame that you feel as a young person. So that's exactly what's happening in Chanel's life at this point. She must earn her living like other orphans. And there was always work available for a seamstress. More sewing took place during Coco's holidays with her Aunt Louise, from who her Aunt Louise actually taught her how to trim and embellish hats.

And so the very foundation of the Chanel fashion empire doesn't start out with perfume. It doesn't start out with clothing. It starts out with hats. And then she talks about, you know, wanting to kill herself again. At the time, I often used to think about dying. The idea of causing a great fuss. She's talking about her death, what her suicide would have done to other people. The idea of causing a great fuss, of upsetting my aunts, of letting everyone know how wicked they were, fascinated me. She has this almost like this

desire for revenge, it sounds like, right? I dreamt about setting fire to the barn. Coco grew up to discover that suicide was not her way out. Yet in a sense, she did need to kill something of herself in order to make her escape. She felt unloved by the aunts, quote unquote, by the family who had abandoned her to the care of the nuns, by her absent father. All the stories she read had taught her that love conquered all, that desire and passion set men and women all right. And so after she gets done with school, she starts. This is a little bit about the early work and then the origin of the name Coco. Her and her friend Adrian wind up finding work. They found employment as shop assistants and seamstresses in a store in a little tiny town in France.

It says the girl shared an attic bedroom above the shop and also worked at the weekends for a nearby tailor altering breaches for calvary officers so she winds up being in a city where there's also a station for french soldiers that's going to be important because she's going to wind up meeting somebody that changes her life um so says you know they're working they're living in a little attic they're they're working multiple jobs and then she has this idea that she wanted to start to have a career as like a singer on stage. So she starts like essentially being a solo performer. And so she has two main songs. It's in French, so I can't obviously try to, I'm not even going to try to attempt to pronounce it.

But in one song, it's about a lost dog named Coco. So it says it was a ditty about a girl who had lost her dog. Soon the audience greeted her with calls and christened her with the name of the lost dog. Thus, Gabrielle became Coco, a metamorphosis that might have been humiliating rather than liberating, but nevertheless led to a birth of a legend. And so she winds up meeting, this is going to be the, she meets this guy. His name's Balsam and he's really wealthy. So this is Coco's introduction to high society.

Balsam was sufficiently intrigued to provide a different way out by inviting her to see his stables and house. And so Coco went with him there to an abbey that had become a house of pleasure, leaving Gabriel behind her, locked away in a shadowy place where no one might find her, nor the torn remnants of her past so that's a fancy way of saying that she's from here on in she's just going to bury her past she's going to create a new life for herself she's going to lie all the time about her childhood she does not want any i think part of this comes from she doesn't want to feel like pity or for people to view her as any kind of you know weak person that needs help and so it says boss on introduced a little orphan seamstress into a decadent world

uh chanel in turn used boss on as a stepping stone to get to paris and so he's going to eventually help her set up her first business this is but i want to point something out because i think this is extremely important is the importance of differentiation and even when um when coco was young and poor, she tried to dress differently than anybody else around her. And this is what's going to get a lot of her clothes and her hats attention at the very beginning is that they were completely,

almost diametrically opposed to what the fashions that Parisian women were expected to wear at this point in history. So it says, Coco described herself as free and uncumbered dressing, neither as a great lady, nor as a maid. She described herself as a young tomboy.

So she would dress in like almost suits and stuff, spending her days galloping on horseback through the forest. She sought to define herself by her idiosyncratic choice of clothes. She wore, and this is really important because this is also how she designs things later on. She wore simple riding breeches and equestrian jackets from a local tailor, thus distinguishing herself as somehow unique. So eventually she makes her way to Paris. So Balsan, his idea, there's a lot of like these leisurely gentlemen.

Some people work. A lot of these guys don't. A lot of the lovers that Chanel takes over her life, they were like aristocracy. They had a lot of money, but they weren't the ones that made the money. It was like they were inherited throughout the line, right? And so they kind of like lay about. And this Balsam guy essentially just wanted Coco to stay at his house. He had a bunch of other women there, I guess a bunch of like a stable of lovers that he's all paying. And so we're going to see Chanel's like, that's not the life I'm going to live at all. She was determined to have financial independence, which again, think about how rare this is. We're right around what, 1903 Paris. There's not a ton of female entrepreneurs

at this time, right? So it says, this is Coco, we're calling this time, I didn't know Parisian society, it was very complicated. And then she has this word, it's a French word, but it's the women that Balsan keeps at his house, and essentially just pays them to just lay about. And I guess when he wants to be with them, he's, that's what they're like, he's, they're on call, essentially. So he says, these women were paid, I knew that I'd been taught that I said to myself, are you going to become like them a kept woman this is appalling i don't want this what she did want was to earn her own living um so she winds up she winds up leaving balsam for his friend and this guy named boy capel and this is actually going to be the love of her life and he actually dies tragically and i say love of her life a lot

of these guys have like they're married and so like she's usually like the mistress is the role she plays um so boy kapal is going to die and that's going to be like devastate her for the rest of her life but they're going to agree to help fund uh she's like i want to make hats i want to have a hat shop like i want to have my own fashion like boutique uh you know it's just on a lower level it starts off very very humble for lack of a better word so it says they agreed to share the cost of setting her up in business to sell the hats that she was already making for herself and for her friends so some of capel's and balsam's friends are also actresses like she's introduced into high society right this is like the leisurely high society uh young people in paris at the time and she's making hats that are very different from

anyone else and so i'm going to go into like starting her business and the simplicity of her first products and simplicity is extremely important in understanding chanel's approach to life um excuse me her approach to her business and i think i'm going to talk about that multiple times but anyways she starts making these hats and even before she has a store actresses and other people that are like well known and and think of like the influencers of their day they start wearing them so this helps jumpstart her business actresses begin to wear chanel's designs on stage and in magazines and so chanel is talking about the difference in her approach to this business as

as to the two people that are these two guys are helping set this up. She's like, oh, OK, yeah, we'll we'll give you a space and a little bit of money to get some inventory. You know, so you have something to play with during the day. And she's like, I'm I'm not here to play. I'm here to make a fortune. They decided to give me a place where I could make my hats the way they the way they would have given me a toy thinking, let's let her amuse herself. And later we'll see. They didn't understand how important this was to me. And that is, I should have underlined that three times because that is really apparent

as you move through the story of Coco Chanel. Her business was the single most important thing in her life because it gave her independence and freedom. If her business would succeed, that means no one could ever hurt her again. And that's where we see complete dedication. But also she has like this armor she puts up around people. It's like once I'm independently wealthy, no one can harm me. And then you could you could also think maybe she took that too far because at the end of life, she's like, I shouldn't have lived my life alone. I should

have let more people in. But I could understand, you know, not wanting to feel vulnerable given how her first 20 years of life. The one certainty was her decisive approach to fashion. Coco dressed like a young convent girl or a schoolboy and made hats that were stripped of embellishments and of the frills that she dismissed as weighing a woman down. So at this point, fashion is like, she's doing the exact opposite. They add things. They add frills, corsets, colors, all the stuff.

Chanel's approach is remove, it reminds me of Bruce Lee, hack away at the unessential. And this is something she talks about later on where she has competition from people like Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga.

And she even says in this book, she goes, the boys don't understand. My edge is that I'm a woman. I know what women want. And she said, the boys are trying to dress us up as if we're in a play, putting us in costumes and these elaborate things. She's like, that's not what women want. We want to be comfortable. We want style. We want understated luxury that's timeless, which again, I think Chanel is dead on the fact that you look at it. There's a lot of pictures in this book and you look at something she made in 1935, 1929, 1950s, and you could still wear to this day. So let's go back to the idea of the simplicity of her first products. Her hats

were not entirely original. At first she she purchased simple straw boater hats from a department store and then trimmed trimmed them with ribbon herself but they were chic nothing makes a woman look older than obvious expensiveness ornateness and complications he said and so she goes to she deliberately goes against the grain of what everybody else is producing therefore her product looks different it stands out she has all these people wearing them on stage and in magazines and so her hats start going like her hat starts selling like crazy this is going to give her opening to start doing clothes and then when she does clothes she can do perfume um and then this is a good indication of again she's all in

like oh do you think i'm giving me some kind of play toy it's like no no you don't understand how important this is to me coco began to edge her way to the center of attention elbowing past her rivals and competitors and again almost all of her competitors are men are men they're it's men that's making women's fashion so she has a massive edge here and so we have a description this was fantastic so one of her main competitors at this time was a this guy that was dubbed in paris as the king of fashion his name is paul poray maybe it says i'm just gonna call him paul paul whose fame at the time uh was such that he dubbed himself the king of fashion said of chanel's early days as a hat

maker he uses a different word but i had to look it up but it translates to hat maker we ought to have been on guard against that boyish head it was going to it was going she's talking he's talking about chanel obviously because she would dress like like almost like a tomboy again that's the way they thought of it because they thought you know women should be in these elaborate like costumes but who's going to want to walk around on a tuesday afternoon you know dress like that that was chanel's understanding. She's like, no, this is not comfortable. This is how men think we want to dress. That's not how we would actually pick if we had our own choices. So it says we should have been on guard against her.

It was going to give that head of hers, her brain, was going to give us every kind of shock and produce out of it hats, gowns, and coutures, and all these words I can't pronounce, and jewels and boutiques. And so she uses the momentum of all the sales to open to get out of, at first she's just, you know, on the bottom floor of one of their apartments, and then she gets her own store, which is interesting. So it says, beauties flock to buy hats from Chanel at her establishment. Her business has grown so successful that she opened a new premise. It gives the address. And anytime I'm reading these books, I usually look up all the addresses on Google Street View just to see what they look like. And her first store, which she's opening

now, we're still in the early 1910 actually, is just a few hundred yards from where the Chanel store in Paris is still to this day. So let's go back to how she's approaching her work at the very beginning of her business and really think about that line she said, they didn't know how important it was to me. Imagine you're, let's try to put ourselves in her shoes at this point in her life. She's an orphan, little to no family, no money, no stability. All she has is this glimmer of opportunity in the house of Chanel. Imagine how important the success of her business is to her at this moment in her life.

But for all the outward success of her designs and the impeccable surface that she presented to the outside world, remember, she's all about making myths. She's not going to let you inside. Her facade on the outside, her external facade is impenetrable. Inside, something was troubling her. I often fainted. I had so much emotion, so much excitement. I lived so intensely, my nerves couldn't stand it. When she to, I think she's 87. She works to the day she dies. So when she worked, she said her health recovered. The house of Chanel seemed to give her stability.

And so listen to what she says to one of her seamstresses at one of her very first stores. I am not here to have fun or to spend money like water. I'm here to make a fortune. A year later, Chanel was earning sufficient money to have no more need of Capel's financial support, and she rejoiced in her independence. Her clothes look, and she's, I forgot to mention, I fast forward in the story. She goes from making hats to clothes. And again, the same approach she has for the hats, where she's removing all the hacking away at the unessential, making something that she herself would want to wear because she knows if she would want to wear it, other women would want to wear it as well. She says that same approach to her clothing. A year later, Chanel, I already read that point. She rejoiced in her independence.

Her clothes look simple, sleek, and fluid, designed to be worn without corsets and with casual indifference. They had to be comfortable the rewards were considerable her work liberate this is so important liberated chanel from other constrictions she says i was my own master and i depended on myself alone and we see she's even able to expand her business even when even in wartime so she's going to close her shop in paris uh because germany is going to invade for uh paris uh so in 1939 i think she she closes her store and then she takes like a 15 year uh she she like almost like a hiatus uh she's still working but not doing any new collections but anyways we're not there yet we're still in the early

days of her business we're in world war. We see the relentless resourcefulness of an early Coco Chanel. Chanel's business flourished even in the shadow of the First World War. She soon had to adapt to wartime restrictions. So she's got all kinds of materials that she either can't get anymore or she gets in limited supply. So it forces that resourcefulness. There was a shortage of material. I cut jerseys. So she's saying like she makes multiple new pieces from anything she had. I cut jerseys from them, from the sweaters, the stable lads wore. And then I would knitted training garments that I wore myself. By the end of the first summer of the war, I had earned 200,000 gold francs. So she's making, again, just doing as much as she can with the limited materials she has. And the only way to do that is to be resourceful. She's using her sense of creativity to figure out, OK, how can I produce and sell clothing when I'm severely limited on supplies? And again, they're extremely popular. She made 200,000 gold francs in the first summer.

Despite the horrors of the front line, her sales continued to increase. Her clothes were chic but not showy. They were monochrome. She talks about she's famous, obviously, for the little black dress. She liked black and white. She would do colors, too, but she just talked about you don't need. Again, her desire for simplicity shines through over and over in this book. So they're not showy, monochrome, and keeping with the mood of the times. Fashion should express the place and the moment, Chanel would later observe.

I was witnessing the death of luxury, the mood of the times fashion should express the place in the moment chanel would later observe i was witnessing the death of luxury the passing of the 19th century the end of an era she watched its demise without sympathy knowing that her time was coming she's talking about the change in fashion how everybody's going to eventually copy uh and and try to simplify just like she's doing her product line right now that the grandeur that she had witnessed would soon crumble choking on its own excess and listen to how she describes her distaste for the designs that that were were popular before she uh before her business like before she established uh chanel's like the leader in the fashion world in her words the last reflections of a baroque style in which the ornate had killed off the figure in which over embellishment had stifled the body's architecture just as parasites smother trees in a tropical forest complicated patterns an excess of lace of embroidery of gauze

but coco was going to change all that chanel was going to impose black and so at the beginning there's this giant quote uh that coco's famous for it says i i imposed black it's still going strong today for black wipes out everything else around and so this is where she designs one of her most famous products product is still in demand today You see pictures in this book of the little black dress from like 1926. And it looks exactly like somebody would still wear it today. And I'm sure they do. So it says she took black, the color of mourning, and turned it into a celebration of chic. The little black dress wasn't formally identified as the shape of the future until 1926 when American Vogue magazine published a drawing of a Chanel

design and announced, here is a Ford signed Chanel. Listen to this metaphor, this Henry Ford-esque metaphor about the black dress. Remember, this time he's producing the Model T and you can only get it in black. Here's a Ford signed Chanel. It was a simple yet elegant sheath in black with long, narrow sleeves worn with a string of white pearls. And Vogue proved to be correct in the prediction that it would become a uniform as widely recognized as a Ford automobile. Fast and sleek and discreet. And so Chanel talks about why she chose black. She did not approve of what she saw before her. Those reds, those reds those greens

those electric blues he's she's talking about what other designers other male designers are dressing women as she's like no she says listen to this this is a crazy sentence those colors made me feel ill coco made a vow to herself those colors are impossible these women i'm bloody well going to dress them in black. And then she says that famous quote, I just said, I impose black. It's still going strong today for black wipes out everything else around it. So there's a lot of stories in the book about like the people she dates and the lover she takes and all this other stuff. She winds up working with Picasso. I think she met Hemingway, all these famous people. I am going to talk more about her relationship with

Churchill, which was fascinating. But where I'm at in the book, she's taking this French lover. He's some kind of artist, I guess. But really, it's a maxim that I thought was very interesting. And the way she's describing the way she works and the way it is similar and also different than other people. So I'm going to skip his name. His dictum was to work on an empty stomach and in a cold state. She did not see herself as an artist like him. She repeatedly described herself as an artisan who works with her hand. And yet her precision and commitment to her craft was reminiscent of his. She talks about he's always dedicated to what he's doing.

There's a famous quote video, like a short video that goes around about Kobe Bryant saying, like, you know, if you're lazy, get the hell away from me. I don't want anything to do with you. Coco would say the same exact thing. She was extremely dedicated. But this idea where she's like, I'm not an artist. I'm an artisan. I work with my hands.

And I have precision and commitment to my craft. That reminds me of one of my favorite books I've ever read for the podcast was the biography of George Lucas. Just an unbelievable life story and how many multi-billion dollar businesses that one guy created. It's just outrageous. And he says something that was very interesting in his biography. I think this is Founders No. 35. It's such a good book. I'm going to have to wind up rereading it and rerecording another episode on it because there's a lot of things in that book that I want to remind myself from time to time. But he talks about entrepreneurship. It's a

practice. I'm a craftsman, right? So he says, my thing about art is that I don't like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit. And I equate those two directly. I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art. I make a movie. And I think if Coco heard that quote from George Lucas, she would she would agree with it. All right. So this is about her most successful product of all time. This is Chanel number five. Do you know like this also blew my mind and we're going to see the people that are introduced her partners here. Chanel is still a private company to this day and it's still owned by. And we're going to see the people that are introduced, her partners here. Chanel is still a private company to this day. And it's still owned by this family we're about to meet. Coco was always contrary, which is the first thing to remember when telling the story of Chanel No. 5.

A story that is a fairy tale, yet is also the solid foundation of her empire. No. 5 was multiplied a million times over and more far more in a dizzying dizzying proliferation that made coco chanel rich and recognized around the world so that her name became a brand and her fate and her face as famous as her logo uh so it says in the summer of 1920 coco chanel met ernest beau who was an expert expert perfumer who established a laboratory in the south of france uh he was known as the performer to the czars so chanel also had some uh like a like one of her lovers and relationship she had was with uh like a bunch of she got involved a bunch of russians and some of these people were expelled they used to be like with the czars family so they wound up being

uh like going from extreme wealth to not having any money. One of these guys was like a well-known playboy. All women thought he was beautiful. But when he gets kicked out and goes to France, he has no money. So he's dating Chanel, but she has to like pay for everything, which is really interesting. So anyways, it was through them that she meets this perfumer. This is the, we don't know if this is true, but this is what's purported, how the name came about. Why is this name? The guy, the perfumer, I guess is his title.

This is his version of events. Why did you guys choose that name? Chanel asked me for some perfumes, and I came to present my creations. I had two different series, number 1 through 5 and numbers 20 through 24. She chose a few, one of which was number 5. What should it be called, I asked. Chanel replied, I'm presenting my dress collection on the 5th of May, the fifth month of the year.

Let's leave the name number five. The scent went on sale in 1921. So think about that. A product that's so loved, it's still sold 100 years later. Right now on their website, they're selling three ounces of chanel number five for 140 dollars and so we see more storytelling from chanel about chanel number five she says it was

important to choose one's own rather than have it chosen meaning like you don't like again think about it's not what men might think you want to smell like this is what women want to smell like it was a statement of individuality and of independence. Women wear the perfumes they're given as presents, she said. You ought to wear your own, the one you actually like. When I was young, the first thing I had done, I would have done if I had any money, was to buy some perfume. So it says that evening she had chosen the sample. She winds up going out to dinner. She's at a fashionable restaurant. This struck me as hilarious. She's in Cannes in France. As she dined, she sprayed the women who passed the table with a new perfume. You've got to be able to lead them by the nose, she said. Having done so with her original customers for No. 5, she would start spraying it in her boutiques. So she had three or four boutiques. So she started spraying it uh people in fact it was funny later on in life she lived at the hotel ritz right across from um her store in paris and they would as she's leaving as you see her leaving

the front door of the hotel somebody would either call or run over to the boutique and before she would walk through the door they would insist that you would have to spray a bunch of number five so she like walks through like like it's sprayed right before. And then she like walks through it like as if she sprayed it herself. It's just some, again, she's a hilarious person, uh, just completely over the top in so many ways in one. But I just thought that was hilarious that you, that was your job. Okay. Oh, here she comes. We've got to make sure we spray this, but that's obviously a long time in the future. This is the point. She's just like, I think I have something here, but let's see. You know, she doesn't know yet. And so she's got to do like these guerrilla marketing tactics that give little samples to her best clients in the boutique and it says uh she would underplay her commercial commercial ambitions but suggest to her best clients that they were in on a secret long before anyone else so it'd be way before it was for sale

it's like this is what i'm working on don't tell anybody but here you get to have it you're you know you're part of the play you're a character in this whole brand that I'm building. Okay, so now she has to get into the production. And so they set up this company, which I think is the Perfumes of Chanel, but it's in French. So I think that's what it translates to. And this is the family that still owns Chanel. The entire, like, owns everything to this day. I think it's the grandsons of the two guys that wound up doing this deal with Coco Chanel in 1924.

And so Chanel today is rumored to be one of the most profitable and successful private businesses, privately owned businesses in the world today. So it says Chanel was established in April 1924. Coco owned 10% of the company, and this is why she thought she got taken advantage of. And there's some crazy things that she does later on to try to fix this.

And the Werthamers, I don't know how to pronounce their last names. I'm going to call them the Ws. The Ws wind up owning 90%. One of them is this guy really wild. They each tormented each other at different points in their lives with such antagonism that Pierre had to employ a full-time lawyer simply to deal with her. It says their relationship engaged in combat that was reminiscent of a bitterly fought divorce, but they nonetheless retained a mutual respect. The return on the money they're going to make on the perfume was so profitable that Coco was to regret

having retained only 10% of the business that bore her name. Thus, her battle over numbers flared up periodically. She wanted a larger share of the profits, but Pierre resisted her attempts to wrestle a greater percentage from him. Eventually, a kind of harmony prevailed. So this is what i mean later on so we're in 1924 1947 is when they're going to do the deal where she gets two percent of all sales per year they wind up giving her like nine million dollars of money she had lost during world war ii and then agreeing to pay every single living expense that she has

which is just wild uh just one sentence here i got to point out to you because it's repeated over and over again this is something that masters of their craft as you read through these biographies you see they have in common they have a desire to simplify the appeal of simplicity whereby her hands sought to form pleasingly unfussy designs a few things going on this page. This note I have left myself is that she copied and was copied. She was creative, hard-headed, consistent, and then the last note is formidable. Definitely a formidable individual. Seeing how the designer was both a copyist and much copied.

Also, the person sitting in her store at this point, they're referring to her as the Grand Duchess. So, seeing how Coco was both a copyist and much copied the grand duchess also observed chanel's ability to combine creativity with hard-headed business sense and to do so on a daily basis that's that's a really important part she gets started in you know early 1900s i say 1903 1910 somewhere in there and she keeps going until she dies in 1970 this is a day-to-day thing for her uh chanel says the grand duchess is sitting in there she's saying that chanel was was was negotiating with somebody that was supplying her uh materials that she needs for her clothes chanel was not prepared to barter or give an inch she would brook no further argument eventually the woman stammered and reddened in her

reddened and left in her formidable presence and so what she's talking about also the copying the copied uh she took these ideas she took ideas from like russian military uniforms and repurposed them into designs for women in Paris. Something of the previous world remained, at least in the sense that Chanel's designs were inspired by long established Russian influences. She reinterpreted, that's a great way to think about this. These are all Russian words. I'm just going to give you the translations. She reinterpreted the traditional embroidered blouse. She reinterpreted a military style coat and she reinterpreted a sailor's jacket.

So again, drawing inspiration from all parts of the world, taking maybe something at their foundational level, repurposing it, redoing it, and in the process, creating something new that she could sell to our customers.

I think that's, again, remix, the note of myself, is remix old ideas to create something new. That's exactly what Coco's doing, and that's something we can apply to a million different ideas or products in the future. Here she found the materials of her past ready to be reassembled again into something new. Piece after piece was unrolled to admire a wealth of taste, artistic wisdom, and experience accumulated for generations. Old materials were transformed into new designs and i think this is an important

point so i'm going to pull out two more paragraphs about the fact that she just took inspiration she learned from things around it grabbed in things that were inspiring and then redid it to her own purposes as was often the case of her career as a designer she was quick to distill its essence absorbing it into her own style and selling it to customers eager for her clothes. Chanel's deft designs were not without precedent. And I don't think anything's without precedent. That's just what humans do. We're just building upon the work of previous generations. She just happened to apply that to high fashion. So one of the new things that came out since the 1970s, since that book I read the first time, was the fact that a lot of people suspected. There's an entire book written that's like, oh my God, was Coco Chanel

a secret Nazi spy during World War II? And so part of the reason people believe that, and I'm going to get into the evidence, it's pretty sparse, is the fact that she had a relationship, a friendship with Winston Churchill. She at this time is dating the Duke of Westminster, who is one of these leisurely gentlemen, didn't really work, just sailed around the world on his yacht and partied and had a bunch of women and all this other stuff.

But he was probably the richest man in England at the time because he had multiple generations of wealth that he winds up inheriting and the duke of westminster is also friends with winston churchill so this is way before world war ii and this is churchill actually describing her he winds up spending a week with west uh the duke of westminster and churchill so winston churchill joined them for a week of fishing and during all this other stuff but i want to bring you bring to your attention his opinion of Coco.

He writes to his wife in 1927. Coco is here. She's really great and strong, being fit to rule a man or an empire. And so throughout the book, you have these descriptions. And again, Winston Churchill himself, a formidable individual. That's how they describe her. She's a formidable, she can rule a man, she can can rule an empire she's just as talented as you or I this is her architecture scripture she went to building this beautiful villa in the south of France and it says Coco

could be ferociously intimidating she was very she was certainly very intelligent in discussions one always had a feeling of one owns inferiority. And let's go back to this idea. She was completely dedicated to her business, to her work. She talks about not respecting lazy people. She goes, I know what work is and I never hired layabouts. And then this is a great line at the end of that paragraph. Maybe the best thing she says in the entire book.

It is immoral to play at earning one's living so when you come to work you need to come correct you need to make sure you're dedicated this is not a game we are i'm here to make a fortune we are taking this extremely seriously it is immoral to play at it okay so let's get into this idea like was she some famous german spy or what's happening? Part of this is because she winds up having a relationship with a guy. She's almost 60 years old this time. She winds up having a relationship with a guy that's like 15 years younger than her. And so this is another one of the reasons I wanted to read another book on her.

It's like, was she a spy for the Nazis during World War II? This is just hilarious because they're asking her like you know how could you be with a german during this time and in her famous reply to the question of whether she had involved with a german her response was really sir a woman of my age cannot be expected to look at his passport if she has the chance of a lover there's a lot of lines like that in the book she's she's rather funny and so at the core of this idea that hey she might have been a spy is because she tried there's some people in the german government then this is why i think it winds up being like a big nothing like not really yeah i don't think it's when you read the headline oh

my god she she was a spy for the germans it right? Well, there's a lot of people in like high positions in the German government that are not on the side of Hitler. In fact, they want the war to end. They think this guy's a crazy maniac. And one of these guys contacts Chanel to see if she could broker peace with Winston Churchill. And so Chanel is a French citizen. If she's trying to broker peace, like I don't again and ending the war getting rid of it that's not to me that's not the same as like she's nefariously spying and gathering information for the the German government I don't I didn't see any evidence of that but this is why at the heart of this is the fact that she's had a relation with the Duke of Westminster and and Churchill and so it says the Duke of Westminster whose name also crops up often in the meticulously filed correspondence and diaries of the Churchill archives.

It was on the Duke's Scottish estate that they had fished and played card games together. This is all the stuff Chanel and Churchill did together. They had hunted boar. They cruised on yachts throughout the Mediterranean. They enjoyed house parties, horse riding and pheasant shoots. Thus, they possessed shared memories as well as shared attachments, and their paths were intertwined. You know, this is a good 15 years before the war, before Churchill's prime minister. There were times when politics overrode friendship, though Churchill was skilled at navigating the hazardous grounds that divided the two. So at one point, Churchill hears that the Duke of Westminster is opposing a war with Germany.

As we discussed a few books ago, at this time, it was a very common desire to appease Hitler. So Churchill writes him a note. Churchill wrote to him expressing the gravest concern. I am sure that pursuance

of this line, meaning making peace with Germany, would lead you into measureless odium and vexation. Churchill did not refer directly to his membership of a right-wing pro-German movement. This is the Duke of Westminster. Or to his reputation as an anti-Semite. But he did succeed in bringing him back into the line.

And he proved himself ready to answer Churchill's call to do all that was necessary for winning the war. So it was around this time where she decides to close. It says her decision to close the House of Chanel was an immediate consequence of the declaration of war and was very fascinating. It says at the time, this was seen as an act of cowardice and betrayal. And so this is where we get into a few years later,

this guy named Schellenberg winds up trying to, he's the one that pitches the deal to Chanel through her German lover, this guy named Spatz. And so it says, um, but at some point in, uh, as the war dragged on through 1943,

a bizarre plot began to take shape that would, uh, that Chanel would act as a messenger to Churchill and thereby initiate a peace process. when Schellenberger was interrogated by the British after the German defeat, he indicated that he had hoped Chanel might at least give Churchill a message that senior German commanders were at odds with Hitler and were seeking an end to the war.

And so the interesting side note is during World War II, as you can imagine, the perfume company, 90% of the perfume company is owned by two Jewish brothers, this Jewish family there. And at the time, the Nazis are confiscating the assets of the Jews. And so they were worried that they're going to lose the Chanel company. And this is where you see some, you know, definitely some machinations on Chanel's part to try to use this opportunity to try to wrestle control back over the company, which winds up damaging her reputation for quite a bit. So this is a fight over Chanel No. 5. Pierre and Paul, the Jewish brothers, the owners of Coco and Coco's partners, arrived in New York having escaped Europe with their wives and children after the German invasion of Paris.

Despite the dangers of their journey amidst the chaos of war, the brothers had also managed to keep their business interests afloat not only did the brothers maintain the production of chanel perfumes in their factory on the outskirts of paris which that's what that was crazy to me even as the nazis made attempts to seize their assets but the brothers somehow retained control of their business empire this was despite the best efforts of the woman, being Coco, whose name was such a crucial element in the success of the perfumes, yet who felt her own financial interest

in the perfume company had been wrongfully diluted. And therein lies the key to the most troubling episode of Coco's history. Her legal maneuvers against the brothers were immensely complicated, but in essence, she attempted to use anti-Jewish laws of the german occupation

to oust her business partners a strategy that proved unsuccessful and gravely tarnished her reputation and so the reason her actions weren't successful is because what the brothers did before they fled uh the brothers fled paris in 1940 uh and their shareholdings were taken over by this guy named felix felix owned a French airplane manufacturing company. So they do a swap, right? In return for a stake in his aviation business, they signed over the perfumed Chanel company, who would return it to the brothers at the end of the war. Pierre hoped to protect the business, but the reason he did this is he wanted to protect the business from the German requisition.

His actions also thwarted Chanel's efforts to have the company's declared abandoned when he and his brother left France and seized control of it herself because she didn't know they did this. So, like, can't abandon it. This guy, this Frenchman, right? He's not a Jewish person. This Frenchman now owns the company.

It is a measure of her adversary's swift and adept tactics that they managed to outwit both Chanel and the Nazis. And think about how important that one decision was, right? Because they wind up being able to keep control of what's going to wind up becoming one of the most valuable private companies the world has ever seen. And then that action they made in the 1940s under duress they're they're multiple generations after them you know the the the companies run by their grandkids uh if i'm not mistaken like they that that one decision was so important when i'm generating who knows i mean what billions and billions and billions of dollars that the family has undoubtedly made uh from chanel because you know makes a

couple billion dollars a year in profit every year. They've owned the company since the 1920s. Now let's see Coco's counter move, though. This is a Henry Ford-like maneuver is what I wrote on this page. Coco became intent upon launching her own scents and labeled her perfume as Mademoiselle Chanel to circumvent the brothers. So she's saying, OK, you not going to you're not going to renegotiate Chanel number five and Chanel perfumes. I'll make another competing brand.

And the reason I say that's like a Henry Ford like maneuver is because by like 1919, Henry Ford owned 100 percent of Ford Motor Company. And the way he was able to convince all the other shareholders to sell out to him because he wanted complete control and he hated input from other people. He said, OK, I'm going to quit the Ford Motor Company. I'm going to start a new Henry Ford Motor Car Company in California. And I'm going to make up another product to compete with the Ford Company, which is very similar to what Coco is doing here. Coco's idea worked brilliantly, just like Henry Ford's idea worked brilliantly. Chanel's perfumes were sufficiently convincing to provoke a response from the brothers. The brothers had by then invested massively in their U.S. company,

the Chanel Inc., spending a million dollars in advertising alone, an investment that would have been undermined by a competing range from Coco Chanel. Pierre and Paul wind up bursting into Coco Chanel's attorney's office yelling exactly what does she want what Chanel got was a deal that made her unassailably rich after May 1947 Coco received two percent of the gross royalties of perfume sales throughout the world she was now wealthy enough to never need to work again but she does work again now she does have this interesting gap so from 1939 to 1954 where she closes her store they're still selling perfume i think she has other boutiques

but she's not doing new collections she decides to come back and this is very interesting so she was 70 70 years old when she launched her comeback collection on the 5th of february 1954 and what happens is everybody all the critics and all the media in paris because what she's bringing to the stage again is completely different than what was popular at the time this is when christian dior is at his height all these other people are competing and she said the same thing like they're your designs are way too complicated the reviews were savage enough to have failed a woman less sure of herself. So it's like, you know, they're completely trashing her. But this is Coco Chanel.

She doesn't care. She declared her determination to one of the brothers. I am continuing. I shall continue. I shall continue. They'll end up understanding. To which he replied, you were right. You must continue and so right after you know the

the french media is just saying oh you know she's lost her touch she's you know over the hill etc etc the america media america media loved her collection and it's because of life magazine and american vogue magazine that it winds up selling. And then she becomes super famous. And again, America in the 1950s, gigantic market, unbelievably wealthy. And this really fuels her renaissance. And the lesson here is, you know, if one community, if one place is not buying your work, is there another one you can try? And then this quote I wrote down that comes from James Dyson that was very successful in building his vacuum empire. He says in his autobiography that one decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements.

That editorial is so much. It's a lot better at selling your product than an ad is. And so it says, dresses that were plenty elegant but easy and uh but also easy fitting uh and refreshing uh especially refreshing after some poured on look of some style so they're comparing contrasting like this over the top fashion that's taking place compared with chanel's you know simple timeless elegant orders came flooding in from the united states and this is what chanel says about her difference between her and her competition. I am only a little dressmaker trying to make women young and pretty.

Those other designers that do those pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand women. They don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, to make them freaks. And then we see here in some statements by her she's 74 years at this time so the note of myself is 74 years old and still fired up let's hope to be as lucky as coco uh ross asked her why she happened to be in retirement for so long her brown eyes flashed never was i really in retirement in my heart, she said. I always observed the new clothes.

At last, quietly, calmly, with great determination, I began working on my new collection. When I showed it in Paris, I had many critics. They said I was old-fashioned, that I was no longer of the age. Always I was smiling inside, and I thought, I will show them. And so she did, pointing the way forward, even as she was mocked for looking backwards, which sucks with such success that she was now being copied in France. So that's a funny way to say first they mocked her, then they copied her. And she was happy to see she be being copied. You see her attitude here. So much the better, she declared, seeing imitation as the best form of flattery, a sentiment she echoed in another interview when she damned her young rival E. St. Laurent with faint praise. St. Laurent has excellent taste. The more he copies me, the better taste he displays.

Just two more things before I close. This is a metaphor for our work. And then Steve Jobs like obsession with things that customers never see or won't notice. First one is a metaphor for our work. She still wielded her scissors on a daily basis to shape and remake her creations. What you have to do is cut, she said. Another word for edit, right? Chanel at work in her studio, working until all those around her were exhausted, taking apart a suit dozens of times, And then this is what I meant about Steve Jobs' level of obsession with things that customers may never see or won't notice. Chanel devotes her energies to barely noticeable refinements of detail of her suits and dresses. And I'll close with this paragraph from her niece, who's also named Gabrielle, and I think she really

gets to the essence of Coco Chanel. Sometimes, says Gabrielle, her aunt would tell her, a simple life with a husband and children, a life with the people you love, that is the real life. And yet, Gabriel could also see the manner in which Chanel had cut her own family ties to set herself free. She battled for her freedom, to escape from her childhood, from the suffering of the orphanage, And that is why she designed clothes that made women free. It was all a question of freedom. To be free to drive your car, to ride a bike, to walk to work, you had to be able to forget about what you were wearing.

Forgetting is part of freedom. And so she was free to forget her past. And even if she did not forget it, she put her memories somewhere where they did not weigh too heavily on her, just like the clothes she made that were so light that they seemed to weigh nothing at all. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. You got to read the book. If you buy the book using the links in the show notes in your podcast player, you're supporting the podcast at the same time. I will also leave a link down there. I've been saying I've been doing it for a limited time. I might make it permanent, but you have the ability if you want to switch your membership from a subscription to

lifetime access. So you pay one time, you have access to founders for as long as the podcast exists. To do that, you'd have to sign up using the link that's in the show notes, and then you'd have to cancel your existing membership. Unfortunately, I can't do it automatically. This is optional. You don't have to do it. Some people have emailed me saying they want to keep the subscription because they'd pay more.

I'm completely fine with whatever you choose, but that option is there for you if you want to take advantage of it. That is 199 books down. 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.