Coco Chanel's Riviera - glamour, decadence and survival, 1930-44

Duke of Westminster and Coco Chanel, 1924

I have been very interested in Coco Chanel’s unlikely path in this world, from neglected orphan to world famous designer. Now Anne De Courcy’s newest book Chanel's Riviera has focused on how the designer helped magnetise the Mediterranean playground from Monaco to St Tropez. Chanel’s lover since 1923, Bendor Duke of Westminster bought her a plot of land in Cap-Martin, after spot­ting it while yachting together around the Riviera. 

I already knew that Coco needed someone with extensive experience in commerce, international business connections, and access to large amounts of capital to successfully market her perfume. In 1924, brothers Pierre & Paul Wertheimer became Chanel's partners in her perfume business. During their par­tnership, the Wertheimers saved Chanel by buying 70% of her perfume company. But due to Chanel’s absorbed anti-Semitism, the partnership was doomed.

Chanel purchased five acres of holiday estate in 1928. For the rest of the decade, she oversaw the building and design of the home, Roque­brune Villa in La Pausa. The 1.8 million francs she paid was huge, but to Chanel it was a joy; she filled it with the Duke’s furnish­ings. Chanel's first summer at her villa was amid the glam­our of the pre-war parties and casinos in Antibes, Nice and Cannes. Their love affair ended in 1933, ten years after they met in Monte Carlo, but Chanel kept the elegantly ap­p­ointed villa. 

In the charming port towns of Juan-Les-Pins and Antibes, Chanel’s French mariner’s tops and ropes of pearls were the height of chic. But she was also a trendsetter in the garden where she popularised lesser spec­ies like lavender. Although Chanel’s life, specifically her fashion inv­entions and her love affairs, dominated the book, she was not the only icon whose lives were recorded in great detail.

De Courcy began with glamorous descriptions of the summer migration from Paris on the Blue Train. Socialites, artists and writers rented villas and hotel rooms, clearly not an­xious about the economic coll­apse of 1929 and rising Nazism. Evelyn Waugh worked at the Hôtel Wel­come in Villefranche, along with Igor Stravinsky, Serge Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau. Chanel’s great friend Lady Enid Fur­n­ess, an Aust­ral­ian beauty and the third wife of Baron Furness, prow­led with her tame cheetah. American heiress Daisy Fellowes ent­er­tained the Prince of Wales and a divorcée called Wallis. Salvador Dali join­ed Strav­in­s­ky, Cocteau and Pablo Picasso in this villa when they lounged around on handsome pieces of Provençal furn­it­ure chosen by Coco.

In 1938 the Cote d'Azur play­ground was a world of weal­th, luxury and extravag­ance, enjoyed by a bright cast of stars including Jos­eph P Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, Mit­fords, Picasso, Cecil Beaton and Somers­et Maugham. Colette was in a 4-room peasant home in nearby St Tropez and Edith Wharton in a convent in Hyères. PG Wode­house gam­bled at the Cannes Casino while Aldous Huxley enjoyed his villa in Sanary-sur-Mer. 

Roque­brune Villa on the French Riviera

Roque­brune Villa in La Pausa, living room

Did those who settled there think about what was going on in the rest of Europe? Possibly not. It was a glamor­ous life, far rem­ov­ed from conflict. The elite flocked to the Riviera each year to swim, gamble and es­cape from Europe’s turbulence - even when the glamour on the Riviera gave way to oncoming war. They continued to party as the Nuremberg Laws were instated in 1935 and the influx of German Jewish refugees grew. The only person warn­ing fellow partygoers about the inevitab­ility of war against Fascism was Winston Churchill, a guest at the Château de l’Horizon.

Chanel had nothing to worry about. After the Nazis took over Paris in 1940, Chanel moved in with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, an Abwehr/German military intelligence officer. They lived in Paris' Hôtel Ritz, then Germany’s headquart­ers, and in high society in La Pausa.

Not everyone agreed with her. In waiting for the Germans to invade Britain in 1941, Chanel’s close friends Misia and Josep Maria Sert took opposite sides. Misia, a Russian-Polish pianist who hosted an artistic salon in Paris, rejected intimacy with the German over­lords. But her husband, from neutral Spain, used his German con­tacts to live in Occupied France in luxury.

The later chapters described the deportations, and the struggle of many along the Côte d’Azur to hide Allied pris­oners and detention-camp-escapees in their villas. De Courcy showed that sympathy was swinging around to the Jews on the Riviera, des­pite the flood of anti-Semitic propa­ganda pumped out by Vichy. Yet the irreconcilability of a] Riviera’s high-society decadence Vs b] the gruesome atrocities of the war… was diff­icult for the reader.

Conclusion
Chanel’s beauty and intelligence attracted many men, but it was her great tal­ent, work ethic and taste that made her an icon. Chanel’s Riviera focused on the seduct­ive world of the Cote d’ Azur in an era that saw the deepest extremes of lux­ury and ter­ror, starting in the 30s. When the Nazis swooped down, the glam­our of the pre-war parties and casinos gave way to the horrors of evac­uation and displacement. Stories of tra­gedy, sacrifice and hero­ism emerged from the bitter struggle to survive. Chan­el’s Riviera highlighted many peoples’ ex­per­ien­ces, but it largely focused on Coco Chanel and the art­is­ts, writers and historical fig­ur­es. 

Thanks for the great bibliography and index.