CALL ME MADEMOISELLE
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel.
And this is just the first of the countless tricks life has played on me.
In the place where I come from, Bonheur means Happiness; and I, who have always struggled to be happy, instead managed to be in love, even idolized, but "Happy" only in name.
I am French, but not the Parisian you would expect: I was born in Saumur, on August 19, under the sign of Leo.
Maman died of tuberculosis when I was just a little girl, and Papa, a peddler, preferred to leave me in the care of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
I waited for him every Sunday until I was eighteen; perhaps that is why I hate the Lord's day, in Rue Cambon they don't even let me work!
I have very few memories of Papa, but the image of him approaching my little head is still clear in my mind: I was hoping for a kiss while he only wanted to check that I had washed my hair.
He detested every kind of smell, so I created the most sprayed Perfume in history.
The Sisters loved me, they raised me on prayers and sewing needles; when I became too big to stay, I became a little seamstress: I basted hems by day and sang in the café chantant at night.
It was there, among cigarette smoke and eau de cologne, that Coco was born again.
<Here qu'a - Here qu'a vu Coco?>
I sang about a little dog lost at the Trocadéro, I sang that refrain so many times that I confused myself with him and, like him, I never found myself either.
Balzan tried to look for me for a while.
I met Etienne one evening at the Café, in my eyes as an enfant fatale - a fatal little girl - he was ugly, old, rich, but also tender and protective.
I moved to his estate near Paris as soon as I had the chance: there I learned to ride, to devour books (I still haven't stopped and I have the habit of having them rebound with my double C logo), to make featherless and frill-free hats for his mistresses and, above all, I learned Love.
I should have understood immediately that it was fate testing me again and that it was looking at me with a smirk while I squeezed Arthur's hand. I never wanted to grow up, I remained the little girl from the Orphanage even when I dressed the Hollywood Divas and fell in love with an English man who got rich from coal whom everyone called "Boy" - the Boy.
My Boy was handsome, cultured, generous and married.
Thanks to him I saw the sea, I opened the first boutique in Deauville, I became a mistress, I lost a son and I cried.
A car accident took him away and nothing was ever the same.
After him I tried: Russian magnates; musicians like Stravinsky; artists like Dalí; I had affairs with women; I almost managed to marry Iribe, who also died (poor Paul!), but love, after Boy, has always been only with a lowercase l.
We continued to talk, however, he sends me messages through my psychic friends: at home, in the life I called "The Pause", I organize sessions to feel him close.
It can't be him because he tells me things that only we knew.
When the pain is too much and I cannot bear it, I throw myself headlong into morphine shots and work: without Love I can survive, without Work I cannot!
I opened other boutiques, the sale of the Perfume is unstoppable, I make it sprayed everywhere: in dressing rooms, on handkerchiefs, on salesgirls, everything that concerns me must leave the N 5 trail.
Five like the number of the bouquet I chose to perfume everyone, even Marilyn, unfortunate in love and copied like me.
I cut my hair and everyone cuts their hair, I wear bijoux and everyone puts away their diamonds.
I survived two Wars, the Spanish flu, the strikes of my employees. I closed the stores more than once. I was exiled in Switzerland because they thought I was a spy - Idiots! but I never stopped creating and, at seventy years old, I returned to free Women once again from those horrible bell-bottom skirts that Mr. Dior likes so much!
My name is Gabrielle Coco Chanel.
But you call me Mademoiselle.
I closed my eyes for the last time at eighty-eight years old on a cold January day - obviously Sunday!
but I still live in your pants - it is thanks to me that you wear them!
in the drops of my perfume,
in the little black tubes,
in the red lipsticks - never go out without them!
in the fake pearls - because jewelry is meant to make you look prettier, not richer!
in the striped T-shirts - a memory of the sailors I saw with Arthur for the first time,
in the gold buttons with lions - my zodiac sign and the symbol of Venice, my favorite city
and in the diamonds of the 2.55 which, I know, are the BAGS of your dreams realized or yet to be realized!
Work hard, kick open the doors if you find them closed, demand Love and never tire of trying, be elegantly free and, if you happen to suffer, always do it with style.
