Coco in Scotland

    Cross Art Deco chic with Scots Baronial grandeur and you get the perfect place in which to talk about the iconic Coco Chanel, a woman who perhaps surprisingly had strong and enduring connections with Scotland.

    Last night I was at the launch of Justine Picardie's biography Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life at the Balmoral Hotel (pictured above) here in Edinburgh, and first a word on the surroundings which I noted as I sipped my champagne - the room we were in had parquet flooring, acid-etched mirrors, purple velvet banquettes, that pared down elegance complemented by homely tweed cushions and antlers on the wall. That combination turned out to be very apt, as in her illustrated talk Justine concentrated on Gabrielle Chanel's Scottish connections: as the mistress of the Duke of Westminster, she spent many summers on his vast estate in Sutherland where she turned out to be a dab hand with a fishing rod. Up at Stack Lodge and Lochmore, the soignée designer borrowed her lover's tweeds, donned a Fair Isle sweater and spent her days on the water - and with considerable success as the Lochmore game book (in which she appears next to the Rt. Hon. W. Churchill) testifies. But Scotland gave her more than just congenial company and an absorbing pastime, for as Justine explained, it was in Sutherland that Chanel came to love Scottish tweed and cashmere, both materials she featured in her designs and which are still used by the House of Chanel today.

     I happen to have stayed on the Westminster estate (though in a house somewhat more spartan than those in which Chanel was entertained) and I have fished Loch Stack on a wild, wet day and drawn a blank, but things were different in the 1920s! However, knowing that bleak but beautiful landscape, I can imagine the smart Parisienne - albeit out of 'uniform' - relaxed and at leisure there, and the book, which is beautifully illustrated, includes many previously unseen photographs from that period, found in private collections and now made public to offer a glimpse of another part of that famous life and complex personality.

       Last night's event was a fascinating and very enjoyable introduction to the biography which I'm now reading with great interest, imagining Chanel in the duke's private train travelling through Waverley Station - in the lea of the Balmoral Hotel - on her way north to the relative freedom of her "Highland sanctuary, hidden by ramparts of cliffs and sheer granite crags, beyond the reach of fashionable chatter or couture collections", and off to the river again.

Comments

[Livvey K]

The lecture sounds wonderful. I have to admit to a pang of jealousy reading your post- my now not-so-favourite iPhone failed to deliver the email confirming my reservation for a place at the lecture until this morning! But it is nice to hear some highlights.

[Cornflower]

What a pity that you didn't make it!

[Dark Puss]

Would I like the book?

[Cornflower]

I'll let you know when I'm further on.

[Mary Ronan Drew]

What a pleasure the lecture must have been last night. I gulped down the book in less than three days and now I miss Mademoiselle and Misia Sert and Boy Capel and the duke and Paris. This biography is not for everyone but it was certainly for me.

[Cornflower]

Good to hear that, Mary. Thankyou.

[Dark Puss]

Dear Mary, would you care to say why "This biography is not for everyone"? As you will have seen from my question to Cornflower it is a book I would potentially be interested to read.

[Mr Cornflower]

Another connection between the Balmoral and the world of couture comes in Eric Newby's "Something Wholesale"; under its original and much more evocative name of the North British Hotel, it was the stage for dramatic encounters between Newby, then a travelling salesman for his family couture firm, and the rather forbidding cohort of buyers for the big Edinburgh department stores.

I was Cornflower's gillie on the excursion to Loch Stack; when you get foaming whitecaps on an inland water you know it's time to row for the shore.

[Cornflower]

Thankyou for reminding me of the Newby connection (there's a post on his very entertaining book here: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/2007/02/newby_a_la_mode.html ).

[Dark Puss]

Karen, you've hit the "explicit long url" bug in typepad (or at least your implementation of it) just like Harriet Devine on another recent post on Cornflower Books! Your post text creeps under the RH side bar and we can't read all of it.

Peter

[Cornflower]

How odd - it is fully visible to me!
Try this link instead:
http://bit.ly/9kjqmF

[Dark Puss]

OK in Firefox 3, overflows in IE8.

[dovegreyreader]

How exciting to be there Karen! I have finished the book this week and it has thrown up some really interesting coincidences along the way. Dark Puss I think it would be of interest to anyone who has an interest in the Parisian milieu of the 1920s and 30s and the growth of an iconic figure. Coco met and mixed with them all and as Justine said at the Port Eliot event, she had a very interesting war indeed. Plus I also found it fascinating to see quite how Chanel's fashion had been present at a pivotal event in 20th century history. The book itself also a thing of beauty, high production values and masses of new photos.

[Dark Puss]

Hello DGR, Paris, fashion, and beautiful women/men sounds like just the sort of thing to keep any self-respecting cat purring.

[Cornflower]

Lovely to be there, Lynne, and Justine so elegant - as befits her subject!

[adele geras]

I was given a copy of this book on Wednesday by a very kind and lovely friend and I can't wait to read it. It is ABSOLUTELY SUMPTUOUS TO LOOK AT AND HOLD!

[Mary Ronan Drew]

Puss, Chanel was an elusive woman and she told different versions of her stories over the years. She had many friends and enemies, sometimes the same person over time, like Misia Sert, and they told stories about Chanel that changed with their sentiments. So Picardie is often forced to reach for what /likely/ happened and is not always able to be certain. People who don't like "probably" and "possibly" and "may have" in a biography are going to be annoyed with this biography. But given the difficulties I think Picardie has written a fine book.

[Dark Puss]

Mary, that is a very helpful comment. Thank you.

[Dark Puss]

I see it has now dropped off your "current reading" list. Are you able to offer me an opinion on it yet?