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6 Coco, Zelda, Sara, Daisy, and Nicole: ACCESSORIES FOR NEW WAYS OF BEING A WOMAN
- University of Minnesota Press
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6 COCO, ZELDA, SARA, DAISY, AND NICOLE A C C E S S O R I E S F O R N E W W A Y S O F B E I N G A W O M A N Martha Banta There are certain periods (quite rare, indeed) when the so-called addendum of accessories do more than reflect shifts in fashion, when they do more than define an era’s deepest desires and achievements, when they do an exceptional thing by actually creating the social and cultural milieu. This is not a matter of a single item being used to adorn a woman’s costume; it involves a highly charged cluster of visible manifestations of inner impulses. When this occurs, credit cannot be given to a single event or individual, but the instances addressed here are clearly marked by overturnings of everything after the First World War and by the catalyst provided by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. The story of Chanel’s impact on the 1920s is extraordinary, but so too are the chronicles of Gerald and Sara Murphy and their friends F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the fates of Daisy and Nicole narrated in The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. To trace, however briefly, the time line that gives context to Chanel’s evolving career, one goes first through the subtle but telling alterations in fashion taking place in France between 1900 and the start of the Great European War; next a glance at the startlingly rapid social shifts of those tumultuous years; finally a plunge into a world experienced as for the first time, variously called the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the Flapper Era. This time line marks the gestation of the New Woman brought into being by Gabrielle Chanel, the iconoclast who rearranged society’s sexual categories and realigned traditional gender identities. Like her creator, this new species was forever experimenting with provocative forms of self-expression through the feminization of the masculine , the celebration of youth, and the replacement of the salon with the sporting life. Not that there was not a dark side to these changes: the tendency to self-destructiveness (an unbearable lightness of being that resulted from hurtling oneself too quickly into an unknown future while not caring a damn for happiness) and self-erasure (the danger of becoming a product whose only motive is to possess products). These major moves command the forefront of this essay through its scrutiny of the accessories to personal existence introduced by Chanel, borne out by the lives shared by the Murphys and the Fitzgeralds and the events imbedded in The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. What will not be reviewed at any length is the life story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, as fascinating as it may be. The more sensational details of her story (her peasant background and illegitimate birth, the initial irregularity of her social status, and her multitude of lovers, including Igor Stravinsky, the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich , and the Duke of Westminster) are available in a large number of (often gossipy) biographies , three of which will be cited as providing useful information for her career. To follow the example of the famed Chanel look, all is here stripped back to the essential “accessories” that matter most to the essay’s argument: the facts that the Chanel style was derived from the ability to negotiate her way in a world run by men; that a woman once dependent on financial support from various lovers had to escape the label of “kept woman”; that the neat little hats, casual slacks, easy-going pullovers, gorgeously fake jewels , and entrancing perfumes were inspired by the life she had had to live as well as the one she chose for herself. Then there are the “accessories” modeled with pride, but often at great emotional cost, by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and their friends Gerald and Sara Murphy. First comes “Chanel’s World,” which outlines the historical and social circumstances that were the “givens” of her generation. Next is “The Chanel Woman,” the figure of independence she actively created by means of the styles she introduced into 8 3 / C O C O , Z E L D A , S A R A , D A I S Y , A N D N I C O L E [44.198.180.108] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:04 GMT) the social scene. “The Chanel Look” follows with its...