Coco Chanel Al Ostora Wal Haya | Justine Picardie

You may go forever searching for the whole truth about Gabrielle Chanel, and not be able to find the last missing parts. When she sliced ​​up her history she scattered it all over the place, lost some details, hid some, hid her traces, and at times it feels like you might meet her: in the apartment on Cambon Street, or in her studio upstairs, where Karl Lagerfeld now reigns, Although her name was still on the door, as if it was preventing anyone else from entering. The sign as left by Mademoiselle Prive There is a chateau in the French countryside, an hour or so by train from Paris, where Gabrielle Palace-Labruny lives. Quiet place, hidden behind high stone walls and solid wooden gates. Madame Labroni is in her eighties now, but her face still bears the unmistakable features of the girl she once was. The girl in the picture was holding a bouquet of white flowers so much that her father's aunt kept it near a table she decorated at the Ritz. And one could see in those outlines, her high cheekbones, and her arched eyebrows - why one of Chanel's oldest assistants (Madame Hubert, who had worked for Coco since the business began in 1910, and had known her even before that, in Moulins) was struck by the sight of the young woman. Gabrielle, going down the stairs in Rue Cambon, where she said to her, "You look like Mademoiselle in her youth, you could be her granddaughter..." Now Gabrielle Labroni lives alone, but Mademoiselle is all around her. And in her bedroom, there is a picture of Chanel as a young woman, before she had her hair cut, as long dark black braids rose on her radiant head, resting on her neck so elegantly that you can see why Cocteau called her "The Black Swan." And in the living room were rows of bookshelves filled with early Chanel editions—some signed by authors, including Paul Morin and Pierre Reverdy—and their furnishings still on the floor: Starcourt and Mandel, and a console in the hallway of the apartment on Rue Cambon. What catches the eye is what looks like a black sculpture on the edge of the fireplace in her salon. Abriel explains: "It is a meteorite, it came down to earth in China, it was given to my aunt, by someone who said to her: You cannot buy what comes from heaven." As we speak, she places her hand on the meteor, just as Chanel would. She pauses, then continues, "No one can own her soul, she was the embodiment of independence and freedom, no one can buy her, and she is not for sale." [ ... ] One day Coco Chanel told her friend Paul Morand, one of the many writers to whom she tried and failed to tell her life story. “People’s lives are invisible,” she said to another friend, Claude Delay, shortly before her death, when her face had already become an immutable mask for the world, and her myth apparently a fortress, to the effect that “people’s lives are a mystery.” . Delay was a young woman at the time, the daughter of a well-known French psychiatrist, who is now herself an eminent psychoanalyst, and a great guide in probing the maze of secrets and lies that Chanel constructed to hide the truth of her past. There is no single truth in life, especially for a woman who has built a career based on reframing a woman's ideas of herself, and this may be why Chanel tells so many different stories about herself, as if something new might emerge from her history in each version of the narrative. [ ... ] This seems rather realistic.. Whatever the case, this biography is full of events, surprises and secrets that the author was able to see and narrate in this book. The biography singer with many pictures that represented part of the character of Coco Chanel. The author Justin Picardie is considered a high talent in the field of writing. She has written five books, including Her memoir, If the Spirit Moves You has been critically acclaimed, and has contributed to writing short stories and essays on numerous anthologies and books on fashion and photography. Previously she worked as a journalist for the Sunday Times, managing editor of articles for Vogue, editor of the Observer and columnist for the Telegraph and is now editor-in-chief of Harber Bazar and Town & Country.