qui qu'a vu coco

Coco Avant Chanel, with Audrey Tautou as the titular role

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, where Anna Mouglalis portrays the fashion dynamo

I had the pleasure of watching Coco Avant Chanel (known as Coco Before Chanel here in the States) and Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky back-to-back the other night. If you’re going to do an evening with Coco biopics, this is the order to do them in. Subject-wise, the stories overlapped for just three minutes. C Avant C ended after the death of Coco’s lifelong love Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel in an automobile accident in 1919. CC&IS picks up right after that – Capel is only in the film briefly, then the narrative jumps forward seven years to the aftermath of his death, where Chanel was described to be the only woman who could make grief look chic.

Not only do the films each examine different eras in the fashion titan’s life, but, through the narrative, two decidedly very different women emerge.

In Coco Avant Chanel, Audrey Tautou plays the young, feisty gamine Gabrielle Chanel, nicknamed ‘Coco’ by her lover after the song she sings with her sister in their cabaret act. Tautou’s Coco is a hardworking, strategic young woman who didn’t know quite what she wanted – except to move beyond the memories of her father’s abandonment of her at an orphanage during her early years and her job as a seamstress. She engages in an affair with a baron, Etienne Balsan, whose high-profile friends gives her an entrée into French society as well as a posh pad to stay at. Balsan never comes off in the film as having the deep desire for Coco that Boy Capel does, but it is obvious that he had deep affection for her.

While staying at Balsan’s mansion, Chanel continues her hobby of making hats, gifting them to various girl friends and mistresses who stop by the Balsan home. It is Boy Capel who encourages Coco to take her talent as a hat-maker beyond just a hobby – he believes that she could be a real force in the fashion world. His encouragement allowed Coco to pursue a career, and his leisurely style of dress – relaxed suits and jersey shirts – were greatly influential upon Chanel’s early masculine womenswear designs. As Coco the designer finds great success in Paris, tragedy strikes when Capel dies unexpectedly. The last images of Coco in the film are of a heartbroken woman, left without her love but with the thriving business that he inspired her to create.

In Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, Coco Chanel has already found success in the fashion world. When she invites Stravinsky and his family to stay with her at her country home, she is independently wealthy. She is not the romantic young girl with designs on becoming an actress like in Tautou’s depiction; the woman that Anna Mouglalis portrays is icy, beautiful, and self-assured almost to the point of callousness. When she embarks on an affair with Stravinsky, she denies herself the passion that previous film’s dynamic between Capel and Chanel (or even she and Balsan, for that matter). She wants what she wants – and, in that particular case, she wanted to be with the man who created such tremendous music that she admired. Never mind that Stravinsky’s wife, who is dying of consumption, and children are in the next room. The affair serves a greater creative purpose, the film seems to say – borne out of their illicit relationship is the creation of Chanel No. 5 and Stravinsky’s experimentation with freer form and Neoclassicism.

If Coco at the end of C Avant C had become hardened because of Capel’s death, the austerity that she possesses in CC&IS is unwavering. It is almost as though she is playing a game – she is an actress within her own world and she can never be off her cue. The poise that she maintains in this film is almost frightening. She seems unreal, like an unfinished character in a Fitzgerald novel; a femme fatale who was only given a short treatment. I finished the movie feeling (and understanding) less about the fashion great than when I started.

But maybe that’s the appeal - and the purpose. The Chanel brand has created a permanent air of mystery around itself – a certain French sophistication where only those in the know truly know. To deconstruct the woman at the helm of the brand would be to turn the Chanel world into something comprehendible to anyone who was willing to dedicate two hours of their life to a movie. Honestly, I can’t imagine anything worse than if a young university student like I felt like I could understand and relate to Coco Chanel. No, Coco was in a league all her own. 

Boy Meets Girl

I've always been a fan of fashion that is both masculine and feminine. A certain level of androgyny is gorgeous on anyone. Whether adding subtle touches to your look, like a pair of Oxfords or a tailored vest, or going all out in a suit and tie (and suspenders, vest, hat, dress shoes, and cane), the tomboy look is a go-to alternative that everyone should have in their closet. The sharp menswear look is not just a passing trend, but a timeless style that has had major moments for the last seven or so decades.

Here's some inspiration:

Woody Allen's then-flame Diane Keaton in her most famous role Annie Hall, wearing a mix of Ralph Lauren menswear and her own boyish pieces.

Audrey Tatou looks contemplative in a still from Coco Before Chanel, outfitted in own of Chanel's signature tailored tuxes.

A Brian Jones-era Anita Pallenberg is seen running through the streets in her pinstriped suit.

Cate Blanchett is shown getting into her role as a young Bob Dylan in I'm Not There.

Another famous figure that Blanchett once portrayed, Katharine Hepburn, is seen smoking a cigarette on set of Woman of the Year in her trademark tailored trousers and blazer.

Marianne Faithfull outside of a London courthouse following the Redlands bust.

Kristen Stewart pals around with her Twilight castmates Kellan Lutz and Robert Pattinson, while wearing a white suit.

Wonder Woman Lynda Carter with date Ron Samuels in his-and-hers tuxedoes at the Golden Globes in 1977.

Bird of Britain Pattie Boyd wears a baggy suit and tie (borrowed from George, perhaps?)

The lovely Kirsten Dunst looks every bit a fashion icon in her androgynous look, adding a feminine flare with her Louboutin heels.

Patti Smith, long known for her music and her tomboyish style, on the cover of her debut album Horses, from 1975.

Studio 54 regular and rock star wife Bianca Jagger swaggers along in her white tux, bowler hat, and cane.

Yé-yé darling Francoise Hardy is shown out and about in the mid-60s in a menswear-inspired look.

Milla Jovovich matches her boyish suit with a cropped 'do and minimal makeup.

Yves Saint Laurent's famous Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women.

Kate Hepburn, again shown in her classic menswear: a bowler hat, tailored vest, and slouchy trousers.

Pattie Boyd, in an Ossie Clark ensemble, gives hubby George Harrison a run for his (sartorial) money in her white suit, while traveling to the Cannes Film Festival in 1968 for the premiere of Wonderwall.

An early fan of the feminine tux, Marlene Dietrich topped off her look with patent oxford dress shoes and a top hat.

For Twiggy, all she needed was a fashion-forward tie, worn with a minidress and button down, to complete her androgynous style.

Anita Pallenberg dresses like just one of the boys in the airport with Mick, Keith, and baby Marlon in the early 1970s.

Alexa Chung, shown on the city streets, in several tomboyish pieces.

In 2009, Rihanna, Twiggy, and Lake Bell all adopted the tuxedo look for the Met Ball.

somebody spoke and i went into a dream

One of my most favorite films is "Amélie," or as the French call it "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain." Starring Audrey Tautou as the title character, the film is a whimsical and quirky look at a quiet Montmartre waitress who decides that in order to make herself happy she needs to help others find their own happiness.

Amelie is a shy girl who has grown up isolated from others; her father mistakenly believes that she suffers from a heart defect and therefore kept her from other children and had his wife Amandine see to her education. Amelie's mother is accidentally killed when someone leaped from atop the Notre Dame Cathedral. After her mother's death, Amelie's father dedicates himself to building a garden shrine in Amandine's memory, leaving the young Amelie to amuse herself. As a young woman, Amelie becomes a waitress with a wild imagination in a Montmartre cafe and grows to enjoy simple pleasures in life such as: cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, dipping her hand into sacks of grain, and trying to guess how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at any particular moment. One night in her Paris apartment, Amelie finds a treasure hidden behind a bathroom tile belonging to the apartment's former dweller who lived there during the 1950s. After tracking the man down and returning the treasure to him and delighting in his reaction, Amelie decides to devote her life to helping the people around her. She helps a lonely painter who paints and repaints "Luncheon of the Boating Party" and has very brittle bones, a hypochondriac, a man that stalks a former girlfriend, a failed writer, a blind man, and her father, who desires to see the world but is unable to, by sending his garden gnome around the world. Despite how happy helping other people makes her, Amelie realizes that she has ignored her own life and is missing out on her own chance for love.