Cocos Code
Gabrielle Chanel spent her teenage years in an orphanage: the Aubazine Abbey inspired salient stylistic features of her artistry. We go looking for traces.
When Sister Christophora speaks about Gabrielle Chanel, a smile flits across her face. “Oh, Gabrielle! She must have been dreadfully bored during morning prayers. Before breakfast she had to sit in a hard pew, not saying a word. Of course, her gaze wandered, glad to be distracted. When she did that, it burned things into her subconscious.” The nun points at the wooden lion’s head in the choir stalls: “That one appears in many of her creations and also graces her gravestone in Lausanne. Gabrielle’s star sign was Leo — and she was quite superstitious.” An understanding smile. “Or there, the intertwined two Cs mirroring each other, which later became her logo: she probably got that from this church window.”
Sister Christophora is leading through the Aubazine Abbey, where Gabrielle Chanel grew up between the ages of twelve and eighteen. After the death of her mother, her father found no better solution than to deposit her here one cold day in March 1895 and to disappear, never to be seen again. She was no longer a child and not yet an adolescent—to Gabrielle, the site could not have seemed more isolated.
Aubazine is in the heart of France, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Massif Central, surrounded by extensive, dense forests. Old buildings coalesce around a picturesque, wild garden with a well. Part of the cloistered walkway is preserved, and is decorated in a friendly way with bouquets of flowers. Above it all presides a distinctive octagonal bell tower. “Gabrielle probably had to listen often enough about how historically significant this tower is”, Sister Christophora laughs: “They say that the Chanel No. 5 flacon stopper was inspired by the octagonal form of the Place Vendôme — but Gabrielle already got to know the special octagon here.”
BEAUTY ON DISPLAY
In Aubazine, Gabrielle quickly understood how things work with the display of beauty. The convent was not only an orphanage, but also a boarding school for better-off girls: their pretty little skirts underscored their status. They ate, played and slept over there in the elegant tower house. Outside the classrooms, they had no contact with the orphans clad in scratchy clothes. “The parents insisted” — Sister Christophora rolls her eyes. On the weekends, posh cars drove up and picked up the refined girls, while life for Gabrielle and her fellow students continued monotonously, day in, day out, even on Sundays, during school holidays and over Christmas. With much praying — and singing, when a celebration was coming up and the impressive nave was filled with people.
THEIR PRETTY
LITTLE SKIRTS
UNDERSCORED
THEIR STATUS.
A catwalk of a different kind: when the topic is not Coco, Chachanel is the star of the Abbey.
Carefully stored: reminders of the Abbey’s most famous resident.
THE “COMET” AND THE STAIRCASE
The girls then assembled on the first floor in front of their classrooms — on a 17th century stone floor with an utterly arcane mosaic. The medieval symbols, the moon, the sun, the bishop’s mitre and especially the large five-pointed stars seem a touch esoteric these days. How often must Gabrielle have studied those stars? The “comet”, in any case, was to become one of her main motifs and probably the most famous of her pieces of jewellery, a diamond- studded brooch from her sole fine jewellery collection, presented in 1932. Thus, the girls warmed up above the mosaic, and then solemnly stepped through the low gateway that leads into the transept of the church and down 36 steps to the audience awaiting them. You can’t hide from people’s gazes on a staircase; you’re on display and you walk down the steps with a straight back, as self-possessedly as possible. Gabrielle internalized this act as well: she was the first fashion designer to have her models walk in single file on a staircase.
Sister Christophora opens the door to a side room without windows or light: “It was not an easy age for the girls. When there was no other option, they had to go in here.” She raises her shoulders, as if wanting to apologise. “The times were different … But you probably had to be very disobedient to wind up here. It was probably more the threat that carried weight.” The cliché of a sad youth as orphans, at any rate, is hardly suited to Aubazine, Sister Christophora says: “Many alumnae returned later, sometimes far into old age. And everyone talked about the warm-hearted atmosphere back then. And about how safe and cared-for they felt. Here they were part of a family, which they no longer had on the outside.”
In addition, when they were discharged at age eighteen, they were able to write and do arithmetic, and they had vocational training with which they found work. At that time, when women were married off as quickly as possible and had to serve their husband, that was no matter of course. The Aubazine Abbey, however, was about nothing less than female self-determination, about as much personal freedom as possible. This idea was not lost on Gabrielle, the unconventional, wild girl with a mind of her own. She learned to sew here. You got further in life in nice clothes, as she observed every day.
THE RETURN OF CHANEL
The orphans slept right at the top of the house, in the attic: in a room plastered in white, where simple black clothing had such an effect that Gabrielle Chanel later placed the colours black and white at the focus of her creations, making them one of her trademarks. In doing so, she rebelled against the opulent conventions of that time with creations that were as simple as they were comfortable. In keeping with the self-determination, she freed ladies from corsets, voluminous gowns, hats that had become too much, and created timeless elegance. If a sense of style is a way of being shaped, Gabrielle must have found it in the only female attachment figures she had — the nuns of Aubazine, draped in black robes with white collars
“EVERYONE TALKED
ABOUT THE
WARM-HEARTED
ATMOSPHERE BACK
THEN.”
Even as a worldly-wise lady, Gabrielle Chanel seemed not to forget what she owed the nuns of Aubazine. She never spoke about her time in the orphanage. But when she packed her belongings in Paris to spend the summer in La Pausa, her house in southern France, she mentioned that she was going to visit her ”aunts” en route. And in the little village, the story goes that one day a limousine drove up, an elegant woman got out and disappeared into the abbey with two heavy bags. The butcher’s daughter carefully observed how the lady came out again after ten minutes — without the bags, and drove away in the limousine. A few days later, the nuns commissioned expensive work on the Abbey. The facts are missing, but Sister Christophora assumes that Gabrielle Chanel remained a benefactress of the abbey until she died in 1971.
«HUMOUR IS FREEDOM»
Sister Christophora was twenty-three at the time, and lived in Boston. Why she joined the Cistercian Order six years later, taking a religious vow, she cannot conclusively explain to herself even today: “Such a decision remains a mystery, for all of us.” She visited various orders and stayed on, she says, where she found the most humour. “Because humour is freedom,” she says. “I’ve never regretted it; in my entire life as a nun I have not felt penned up or subjugated or directed by others. How many women can claim that for themselves?”
But nonetheless she experienced being ostracised: the nineteen other nuns who were living in the abbey in 1978 couldn’t stand the American with her awful French, and sent her out to take over the tours of the abbey. “Perhaps they thought they could scare me away with that, and I’d go back to the USA,” Sister Christophora laughs. But while running the tours, she discovered her fascination with Coco Chanel: “Not with her fashion, I have little interest in that. But for the girl who soaked up this atmosphere, had a comet as a talisman, sang in a cabaret and became a major figure. I tried to look at the things here as she would have. Suddenly, lots of things made sense.”
These days, Sister Christophora and a 96-year-old fellow nun are the last two residing in the Aubazine Abbey. A caretaker ensures that the rain doesn’t get in anywhere, that the paradisiacal garden is well-maintained, and that the fourteen chickens and the roosters Ernest and Hannibal get enough food. He was also the person who rescued the wild kitten and nursed it to health. They tried out all conceivable names: the animal seemed to have only contempt to spare for humans. Until the caretaker called “Chachanel”: the kitten pricked up his ears, came to him, and, purring, rubbed against his legs. Sister Christophora winks mischievously and laughs her hearty laugh: “Who knows, perhaps there’s more to reincarnation than we think.”
The classrooms above the chapel, the beds on the top floor: Gabrielle Chanel spent eight years in Aubazine.
THE CHANEL PATRIMOINE: IN THE SANCTUM
ON THE PLACE VENDÔME
More luxury is hardly possible: Chanel’s legendary watch and jewellery boutique on the Place Vendôme in Paris is all in gold. What only those in the know are aware of: in the Patrimoine basement, actually a security wing, countless original pieces of jewellery and special watch models tell dazzling stories. Only a few visitors are allowed to take a tour through the sanctum: we thank Chanel most cordially for this honour — and we’re still overwhelmed!
ON THE PLACE VENDÔME
More luxury is hardly possible: Chanel’s legendary watch and jewellery boutique on the Place Vendôme in Paris is all in gold. What only those in the know are aware of: in the Patrimoine basement, actually a security wing, countless original pieces of jewellery and special watch models tell dazzling stories. Only a few visitors are allowed to take a tour through the sanctum: we thank Chanel most cordially for this honour — and we’re still overwhelmed!
COCO CHANEL ON …
Femininity: “Age plays no role: you can be captivating at twenty, charming at forty and irresistible for the rest of your life.” (From “Paris-Match”, 1950)
Fashion: “Fashion does not exist only in clothing. Fashion hovers in the air; it’s the wind that carries it; you can feel it, breathe it in. It’s everywhere, also as an expression of current ideas, ethics and events.” (From “L’Allure de Chanel” by Paul Morand, 1996)
Freedom: “I’d like to make dresses that make women feel comfortable in their time. Dresses that help them to live.” (From “Elle”, 1958)
Jewellery: “I like costume jewel lery because I find it provoking to wear billions around your neck because you’re rich. Jewellery is not intended to make you appear rich. Jewellery is intended to make you look adorned. That’s not the same thing.” (From “Les Années Chanel” by Pierre Galante, 1972)
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