#199 Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

What I learned from reading Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. ---- 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. ---- '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, 1935 Her 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, 1927 Chanel'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. ---- 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. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

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• 0:00David Senra?

  "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 Delaie. Delaie 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

• 0:45David Senra?

  emerge out of her history. "I don't like the family," she told Delaie. "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,

• 1:30David Senra?

  reshaping its heartaches, smoothing away the rough edges, but she couldn't keep all the details hidden. That was an excerpt from the book that 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 Founder's Number 64, that was a book that was published right after she died, and I had an original copy.

• 2:12David Senra?

  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, 40 years, nearly 40 years after Coco Chanel died. And it has more information than the first book I did all the way back on Founders Number 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

• 2:55David Senra?

  at that point, on the production of her perfume. So Chanel Number 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 Number 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.

• 3:39David Senra?

  Plus, the company has to pay all of her living expenses, from the most minute detail all the way down to the largest expenditure, houses, cars, everything else. So that 25 million, that 30 million, that 50 million, depending on how much sales were done that year, is essentially all profit. She has no expenses for the rest of her life. And that deal's made in the 1940s, she doesn't die till 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.

• 4:22David Senra?

  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 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've made, a myth, a legend that I've made. A brand is another way to think about that. "That is perhaps a trace vulgar, but that delights them. They are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend.

• 5:07David Senra?

  For them, this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit. Legend is the consecration of fame." So consecration is a name, 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, an experience for you, one you can interact with and live inside."

• 5:51David Senra?

  So this idea of creating stories, of realizing that the 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 was talking, 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 Gabrielle on August 19, 1883. It was in a poorhouse in France. Her mother is 20, her father is 28. They were not married.

• 6:35David Senra?

  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 called them interant market traders. Think of them, they're 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.

• 7:19David Senra?

  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.

• 8:03David Senra?

  She says, "I wanted to be sure that I was loved, but I lived with people who showed no pity. I like talking to myself and I don't listen and I don't like 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. She does talk about, you know, having regret not having a family. I think it has to do with the fact that, you know, her early life was so terrible.

• 8:47David Senra?

  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. It says, "The boys were left elsewhere. They were deposited," and this is why her father is such a scumbag.

• 9:30David Senra?

  "The boys were left elsewhere, deposited with a peasant family. They were 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, you have to like kind of uncover the truth of what she says. So 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 still an 11-year-old girl when this is happening. "I was thoroughly unhappy. I fed on sorrow and horror. I wanted to kill myself."

• 10:15David Senra?

  And she's also deeply ashamed of the fact that she's an orphan. You know, they might be going to church or other places and they describe her as, you know, this orphan. And having to hear people call me an orphan? They felt sorry for 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.

• 10:40David Senra?

  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 her, gonna be her occupation. So also where she starts making money as a young person. She's, even when she's 18, she starts getting a job as a seamstress, seamstress. And then she talks about being beaten. She says, she remembered her reddened skin when her aunt, when her aunts beat her. I remember that they used to take my knickers down to spank me. And then she'd say the bottom, like, 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,

• 11:23David Senra?

  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 gonna see me moving forward in my life. So it's fast forward, she's 18, she's sent to another religious institution. It's called the Notre Dame School. And this is, there's obviously no, no family money. She's extremely poor. So this, she wants it being a charity case. That obviously bothers her as well.

• 12:05David Senra?

  She was one of the charity pupils who were provided with a free place and therefore treated differently than those whose family could afford to pay for their education. Here it 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 paupers' uniform with secondhand shoes rather than the more expensive outfits of the fee-paying, of the people, the, the students that had families that were able to afford it. It was here, too, that she was given further instructions in how to sew. She has to work. So not only is it like the, the tuition is dedicated, it's like donated, but 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...

• 12:47David Senra?

  I think it was like maybe Founder's 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 Ogilvie. And Ogilvie was a charity case as well. And it's very interesting like how driven Ogilvie winds up being one of my personal heroes. That's why I keep reading books about him because I think the guy's very fascinating. I think he's a gen-- I think when Warren Buffett called him a genius, Warren was dead on. But Ogilvie winds up having this insane drive later in his life. And he talks about it freely, that he was in a rush to be unbelievably rich, right? And part of that, I think, has to do with the fact that, you know, his dad didn't do well, so he was sent to this school. I think this was in Scotland, might be in England, I can't remember exactly. I'm gonna read a quote, though, because it's very similar to what's happening here.

• 13:31David Senra?

  And the parallel just jumped out at me when I read this section in Coco-- in this Chanel biography. So it says, "Ogilvie 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 Ogilvie and 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.

• 14:14David Senra?

  That's gonna 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 her seamstress. More sewing took place during Coco's holidays with her Aunt Louise, from who-- that 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.

• 14:56David Senra?

  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.

• 15:41David Senra?

  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 Adrienne 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 breeches for cavalry 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. So it says, you know, they're working, they're living in a little attic, 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.

• 16:23David Senra?

  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, 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 gonna be the, she meets this guy. His name's Balsam, and he's really wealthy. So this is Coco's introduction to high society.

• 17:06David Senra?

  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 Gabrielle behind, leaving Gabrielle 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 gonna 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 wanna feel like pity, or for people to view her as any kind of, you know, weak person that needs help. And so it says, Balsam introduced a little orphaned seamstress into a decadent world.

• 17:49David Senra?

  Chanel in turn used Balsam as a stepping stone to get to Paris. And so he's gonna eventually help her set up her first business. This is, but I wanna point something out because I think this is extremely important, is the importance of differentiation. And even when, when Coco was young and poor, she tried to dress differently than, than anybody else around her. And this is what's going to give her, 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 were, that Parisian women were expected to wear at this point in history. So it says, Coco described herself as free and encumbered, 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

• 18:34David Senra?

  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.

• 18:55David Senra?

  So eventually she makes her way to Paris. So Balsam, 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. Like they, they had a lot of money, but they didn't, 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.

• 19:38David Senra?

  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 Balsam 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, 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. So she winds up, she winds up leaving Balsam for his friend and this guy named Boykapelle. And this is actually going to be the love of her life. And he actually dies tragically.

• 20:23David Senra?

  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. So Boykapelle is going to die and it's going to be like devastate her for the rest of her life, but they're going to agree to help fund. 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, you know, 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 Bausan's friends are also actresses. Like, she's introduced into high society, right? This is like the leisurely, high society, young people in Paris at the

• 21:06David Senra?

  time. And she's making hats that are very different from anyone else. And so I'm gonna 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, excuse me, her approach to her business. And I think I'm gonna 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 think of like, the influencers of their day, they start wearing them. So this helps jumpstart her business. Actors 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 to the two people that are, these two guys are helping her set this up. She's like, "Oh, okay, yeah, we'll, we'll give you a space and a little

• 21:50David Senra?

  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, "Give me a place where I could make my hats, the way they, the way they would have given me a toy, thinking, let, 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

• 22:32David Senra?

  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 this stuff. Chanel's approach is remove, it reminds me of Bruce Lee, hack away at the unessential.

• 23:17David Senra?

  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 some kind of, like, we're in a play, putting us in costumes and these elaborate things." He'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 was dead on, the fact that, you look at, 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 it to this day. So let's go back to the idea of the simplicity of her first products.

• 24:01David Senra?

  Her hats were not entirely original. At first, she purchased simple straw boater hats from a department store and then trimmed them with ribbon herself, but they were chic. "Nothing makes a woman look older than obvious expensiveness or nateness and complications," he said. And so 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 hats start selling like crazy. This is going to give her opening to start doing clothes. And then when she does clothes, she can do perfume. And then this is a good indication of, again, she's all in. You're like, oh, you think I'm giving me some kind of Play Toys?

• 24:46David Senra?

  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. 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 this guy that was dubbed in Paris as the king of fashion. His name is Paul Poré, maybe? It says, I'm just gonna call him Paul. Paul, whose fame at the time was such that he dubbed himself the king of fashion, said of Chanel's early days as a hatmaker. He uses a different word, but I had to look it up. But it translates to hatmaker. "We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head." It was going to, it was going, and he's talking about Chanel, obviously,

• 25:31David Senra?

  because she would dress 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 costumes. But who's gonna want to walk around on a Tuesday afternoon, you know, dressed like that? That was Chanel's understanding. She's like, no, this is not comfortable. This is how men think we want to dress. It'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 gonna give, that head of hers, her brain, was gonna 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,

• 26:14David Senra?

  and then she gets her own store, which is interesting. So it says, "Beauty flocked to buy hats from Chanel at her establishment. Her business had 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, you know, we're still in the early 19, this is 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."

• 26:56David Senra?

  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. You know, 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 worked, she said, "Her health recovered."

• 27:41David Senra?

  So that's another thing. She lives till, I think she's 80, 87. She works till 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,

• 28:25David Senra?

  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 looked 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 liberated," this is so important, "liberated Chanel from other constrictions." She says, "I was my own master, and I depended on myself alone."

• 28:59David Senra?

  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 because Germany's going to invade Paris. So in 1939, I think she closes her store and then she takes like a 15-year, she did like, almost like a hiatus. 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 I. 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. She gets unlimited supplies, so it forces that resourcefulness. There was a shortage of material. I cut jerseys.

• 29:44David Senra?

  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 knit 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 like her sense of creativity to figure out, okay, how can I produce and sell clothing when I'm severely limited on supplies? And again, she's, 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.

• 30:29David Senra?

  She liked black and white. She would do colors too, but she just talked about, you don't, 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 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

• 30:59David Senra?

  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 were popular before she established Chanel as 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.

• 31:44David Senra?

  Chanel was going to impose black. And so at the beginning, there's this giant quote that Coco is famous for. It says, "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 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 morning, and turned it into 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

• 32:25David Senra?

  design and announced, 'Here is a Ford signed Chanel.'" Listen to this metaphor, this Henry Ford-esque metaphor about the black dress. Because 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 greens, those electric blues."

• 33:07David Senra?

  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."

• 33:31David Senra?

  So there's a lot of stories in the book about like the people she dates and the lovers she takes and all this other stuff. She went to 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 like French lover. He's like an artist, 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.

• 34:14David Senra?

  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 multiple, multi-billion dollar businesses that one guy

• 34:55David Senra?

  created is just outrageous. And he says something that was very interesting in his biography. I think this is Founder's number 35. It's such a good book. I'm going to have to wind up rereading it and re-recording 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 agree with it. All right. So this is about her most successful product of all time. This is Chanel

• 35:39David Senra?

  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 this family we're about to meet. Coco was always contrary, which is the first thing to remember when telling the story of Chanel number five. A story that is a fairy tale, yet is also the solid foundation of her empire. Number five was multiplied a million times over and more, far more, in a dizzying proliferation that made Coco Chanel rich and recognized around the world so that her name became a brand and her face as famous as her logo. So it says in the summer of 1920, Coco Chanel met Ernest Beaux, who was an expert perfumer who established a laboratory in the south of France.

• 36:24David Senra?

  He was known as the performer to the czars. So Chanel also had some, like, one of her lovers and relationships she had was with she got involved with a bunch of Russians. And some of these people were expelled. They used to be like with the czar's family. So they wound up being 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?

• 37:05David Senra?

  The guy, the perfumer, I guess is his title, is, 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 one through five and numbers 20 through 24. She chose a few, one of which was number five. What should it be called? I asked. Chanel replied, I'm presenting my dress collection on the 5th of May, the 5th 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 are selling three ounces of Chanel number five for $140.

• 37:48David Senra?

  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 went 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 her new perfume. You've got

• 38:31David Senra?

  to be able to lead them by the nose, she said. Having done so with her original customers for number five, she would start spraying it in her boutiques. So she had three or four boutiques, so she starts spraying it. People, in fact, it was funny, later on in life, she lived at the Hotel Ritz right across from 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'd have to spray a bunch of number five. So she like walks through, like, it's sprayed right before, and then she like walks through it, like, as if she sprayed it herself. It's just, so, again, she's a hilarious person, just completely

• 39:16David Senra?

  over the top in so many ways in one, but I just thought that was hilarious. That was your job. Okay, well, 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 she's doing, spraying people randomly in the restaurant. So it says even before, oh, she did something smart, too. Before, it was in mass production. She just had a bunch of samples. And so she would give little samples to her best clients in the boutique. And it says, she would underplay her commercial ambitions, but suggest to her best clients that they were in on a secret long before anyone else. So 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.

• 40:01David Senra?

  You're a character in this whole brand that I'm building.

• 40:05David Senra?

  Okay, so now she has to get into the production. And so they set up this, 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.

• 40:50David Senra?

  And there's some crazy things that she does later on to try to fix this. And the Wortham, Wortham, Worthemers, I don't know how to pronounce their last names. I'm gonna call them the W's. The W's wound up owning 90%. One of them is this guy named Pierre. To categorize Pierre's longstanding relationship with Coco as a business arrangement based on a straightforward arithmetic would however be too simple for a union as complicated and intense as the most enduring marriage. They go to war multiple times. They wind up working things out later on and they're okay, and they're on good terms before she dies, but this is really wild. They each tormented each other at different points in their lives with such antagonism

• 41:31David Senra?

  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 gonna 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 gonna do the deal where she gets 2% of all sales per year. They wound up giving her like $9 million of money she had lost during World War II,

• 42:16David Senra?

  and then agreeing to pay every single living expense that she has, which is just wild. Just one sentence here I gotta 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." 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

• 42:57David Senra?

  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 a really important part. She gets started in, you know, early 1900s, I'd say 1903, 1910, somewhere in there, and she keeps going until she dies in 1970. This is a day-to-day thing for her. Chanel, the Grand Duchess is sitting in there, she's saying that Chanel was negotiating with somebody that was supplying

• 43:38David Senra?

  her 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 and left in her formidable presence. And so what she's talking about, also the copying the copied, 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.

• 44:14David Senra?

  She reinterpreted, that's a great way to think about this. These are all Russian words, I'm just gonna 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 her customers. I think that's, again, remix, that I know 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

• 44:59David Senra?

  accumulated for generations. Old materials were transformed into new designs. And I think this is an important point, so I'm gonna pull out two more paragraphs about the fact that she just took inspiri-- she learned from things around it, grabbed 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

• 45:43David Senra?

  time, was the fact that a lot of people suspected, there's an entire book written, it'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 gonna get into, like, the evidence is pretty sparse, is the fact that she had a relationship, 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, you know, 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.

• 46:28David Senra?

  So this is way before World War II, and this is Churchill actually describing her. He winds up spending a week with the Duke of Westminster and Churchill. So Winston Churchill joined them for a week of fishing and doing 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 rule an empire. She's just as talented as you or I. This is her architect's description.

• 47:10David Senra?

  She winds up 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's inferiority. And let's go back to this idea. She was completely dedicated to her business, to her work. She talks about, you know, 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. What 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.

• 47:54David Senra?

  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 at 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 involved with a German, her response was, "Really, sir?

• 48:33David Senra?

  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.

• 48:45David Senra?

  And so at the core of this idea that, hey, she might have been a spy is because she tried. There are some people in the German government, and this is why I think it winds up being like a big, not really, I don't think it's, when you read the headline, oh, my God, she was a spy for the Germans, it sounds terrible, 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

• 49:30David Senra?

  information for the German government. 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 relationship with the Duke of Westminster 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'd 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.

• 50:15David Senra?

  "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, you know, is opposing a war with Germany. As we discussed a few books ago, at this time, it was very common, like, this 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

• 50:58David Senra?

  answer Churchill's call to do all that was necessary for winning the war.

• 51:03David Senra?

  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 what's very fascinating is 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 Schellenberger 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, but at some point in, as the war dragged on through 1943, a bizarre plot began to take shape 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

• 51:47David Senra?

  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. And at the time, the Nazis are confiscating the assets of the Jews. And so they were worried that they were 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 number five.

• 52:31David Senra?

  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 their children from the German, 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 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.

• 53:13David Senra?

  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 of what the brothers did before they fled. The brothers fled Paris in 1940, 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 perfume Chanel Company,

• 53:55David Senra?

  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 companies declared abandon when he and his brother left France and seize control of herself, because she didn't know they did this. So like, can't abandon 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 is going to wind up becoming one of the most valuable private companies that world has ever seen.

• 54:38David Senra?

  And then that action they made in 1940s under duress, there are multiple generations after them. You know, the companies run by their grandkids, if I'm not mistaken. Like, that one decision was so important, when generating, who knows, I mean, what? Billions and billions and billions of dollars that the family's undoubtedly made from Chanel, because Chanel makes a couple billion dollars a year in profit every year. They've owned the company since the 1920s.

• 55:10David Senra?

  Now, let's see Coco's countermove, 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, okay, you're not gonna, we're not gonna renegotiate Chanel #5 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% 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, you know, input from other people. He says, okay, I'm gonna quit the Ford Motor Company. I'm gonna start a new Henry Ford motor car company in California, and I'm gonna make

• 55:52David Senra?

  up another product to compete with your, with the Ford Company, which is very similar to what Coco's 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 US company, spending, that's 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 going, bursting into Coco Chanel's attorney's office, yelling, "Exactly what does she want?" What Chanel got was a deal that made her, on a sale, be rich. After May 1947, Coco received 2% of the gross royalties of perfume sales throughout the

• 56:37David Senra?

  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 closed 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, to the stage again, is completely different than what was popular at the time. This is when Christian Dior's at his height, all these other people are competing. And she said the same thing, like, your designs are way too complicated.

• 57:20David Senra?

  Their reviews were savage enough to have failed a woman less sure of herself.

• 57:26David Senra?

  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 continuing. 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 French media is just saying, oh, you know, she's lost her touch, she's, you know, over the hill, et cetera, et cetera. The America media, American 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 1950s, gigantic market, unbelievably wealthy.

• 58:11David Senra?

  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 Stuyson, 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, is so, is a lot better at selling your product than an ad is. And so it says, it was America that celebrated the comeback of Coco Chanel. America had made her famous again, identifying her as a 20th century icon, making her face as recognizable as her legendary little black dress and pearls.

• 58:52David Senra?

  Like Vogue Magazine, Life Magazine was enthusiastic about Chanel's revival of what it was that she had always done well. Dresses that were plenty elegant, but easy and, but also easy fitting and refreshing, especially refreshing after some poured on look of some style. So they're comparing and 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, the difference between her and her competition. I am only a little dressmaker, trying to make women young and pretty. Those other designers that do the pretty little sketches, the boys, they don't understand

• 59:37David Senra?

  women. They don't know how they live. Their idea is to make them weird, to make them freaks.

• 59:46David Senra?

  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. 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, with such success that she was now being copied in France.

• 1:00:31David Senra?

  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. Saint Laurent with faint praise. Saint Laurent has excellent taste. The more he copies me, the better taste he displays.

• 1:00:59David Senra?

  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, taking apart a suit dozens of times, readjusting it until she was satisfied that it was perfect. And then this is what I meant about Steve Jobs level up 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.

• 1:01:48David Senra?

  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 Gabrielle 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

• 1:02:33David Senra?

  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 link that's in the show notes in your podcast player or just put it in 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 a lifetime access. So you pay one time, you have access to founders for as long as the podcast exists.

• 1:03:18David Senra?

  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.