BOOK REVIEWS
CHANEL, CHANEL, CHANEL
A lady, a designer, a business genious, and a leading celebrity icon whose fame even in death is a beacon in the fashion world while and her personal life is one of curiosity, admiration, and disdain on the part of some.
There are fashion gurus of the past and present but none more interesting than Coco Chanel born Gabrielle. Her life story has contradictions in each of her biographies. Even television dramatists, biographers, and Hollywood screen writers have not quite got it nailed down. She, herself, told different stories to different people, and so, her legend comes out with a few pieces missing, such as her real last name, the location and history of her father, how she came by the name Coco, and her history after the love of her life, Boy Capel, died in an accident. The circumstances of his death comes out slightly different, depending on who is relating events. What she did, where she went, and what her relationships with Germans, English, and others entailed during WWII is the latest of sensationalism surrounding her life.
Here are three books that portray her from different perspectives: the designing artiste, the genius at business interests, her love life, or non love life, her acquaintances, who she knew and who she traveled with. Take your pick as to which you prefer or take all three and make your own legend.
Vaughn's book recalls all the other early history, middle life, and then adds the stories of possible espionage for Germans at the same time she was a friend of Winston Churchill, dukes, duchess and other celebrities of the allied world. She had German officers as gentlemen friends, so that although most current dramatists end with the death of Boy Capel, her life was far from over. Indeed, the bulk of her life and legend was yet to come.
She wove a tapestry of successes, more sorrows, war upheavals, failures, surmounted them all, and came out on top once more. Her brand flourishes, and although she sold off her perfume business for a small percentage of the profits, her name lives on.
One movie earned its leading actress an Oscar, but my favorite is the HBO made-for-tv biography with Shirley Maclean portraying Chanel in later life, which is occasionally shown on Lifetime TV, and with a wonderful actress as Chanel. So, even playing her in a movies gives the actresses involved a golden hue.
Karl Lagerfeld now serves as head designer for Chanel, and is doing quite well at maintaining and even elevating the spirit and type of design she was most famous for.
If you can tolerate having your favorite designer's image smeared, you can
read:
Sleeping with the Enemy, Coco Chanel's Secret War by Hal Vaughn, Published by
Alfred Knopf, NY 2011.
Otherwise, you should enjoy:
Coco Chanel, the Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie, It books, 2010, photos, drawings by Karl Lagerfeld.
and
Coco Chanel, an Intimate Life, by Lisa Chaney, pubished by Viking, 2011.
CONVERSATION AT MIDNIGHT, BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
published by Harper Brothers 1937
It is little known that Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem for the stage, a play, if you will, called, "Conversation at Midnight". I had read it in college and tried to find it once more recently in a local library. They could not find it, but after many weeks, moons, perhaps, it appeared. A diligent librarian took the time to dig it out from wherever it was hiding. After all, books from 1937 are hardly sought after as much as those of today, and it is surprising that they kept it because the library often gives away or sells off books after they age a little. So, a book of 1937 is indeed a prize considering all the history that the world has gone thru since.
It is labeled poems, but the structure is that of a drama – play. And Edna says so herself in the intro to treat it as a drama as she has incorporated intermissions of a sort, and the personae interact with each other as a group and individually. So, she considers it a drama.
Written in 1937 shortly before Europe became an unfriendly place to live and the artistes of literature, arts, and humanities, as well as scientists were a mind to get out while they could. It was an international community of thinkers who might well have engaged in such discussion that Ms. Millay articulates as poetry.
The first draft version of this book was destroyed in a fire on Sanibel Isle, Georgia. Ms. Millay tell us that she remembered enough to reconstruct and rewrite it, an amazing feat. How many of us could do that, with our minds grown mushy from tv and Internet nonsense.
The poetic meter is best described as part rhyme and part free verse. The meter can rival that of any author who created poetic drama of length.
I would have hoped that someone might have or will attempt to produce this on stage, as that is what Millay was aiming for.
