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Chanel = Feminist Maneater + Sugar Daddies?

By Wilmaryad Oscallas on | From gayarabguy.blogspot.com

Coco Chanel became a fashion legend thanks to talent, difference, and sugar daddies. Born August 19th, 127 years ago today, Chanel might be the first feminist maneater in men's clothing. Analysis of a golden-fingered, rebellious, quirky myth.

Calling Coco Chanel a myth is an understatement. Few details of her pre-fame days can be accurately verified. No, records of her early life hadn't disappeared. It's just that Mademoiselle reworked her story like she reworked her creations. In the absence of a family life, a child invents one. Chanel was no different. For once.

The absence of a father figure seems Chanel's source of her reworked feminism.

Chanel's feminism was "reworked" because, whether through her masculinized clothes, or giving her body, not her heart, Coco emulated the attitude of a man and, certainly, had sex like one; the latter earning her the label of "maneater."

Oddly, she didn't seem to want to prove a man's presence in a woman's life unnecessary. She wanted men in her life, but as subservient sex objects. If romance and marriage ensued, fine. If not, another boy toy was easy to find.

However, Coco got trapped by her stereotypical understanding of men's nature.

While, at some point, a player puts away his player ways and settles down to make a family, Chanel went all the way in her imitation of the gigolo type of men. As if she just wanted to be admired and loved, with no strings attached.

It's no surprise she married no man. And she had had the opportunity.

Chanel's dating resume is full of sugar and daddies. And that's the second manifestation of Chanel's "reworked" feminism. While a purist feminist would refuse to be taken care of by a man, Chanel's rise to prominence was, partly, thanks to large financial contributions courtesy of her wealthy lovers.

Starting with Etienne Balsan, textile heir, whose live-in mistress she would become, which didn't help her maneater reputation. When she realized Balsan just wanted to have fun, she left him and took over his apartment in Paris. That's when fate made her cross paths with Balsan's friend, Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel.

Capel ignored who his parents were and, like Chanel, wanted to climb up the social ladder to erase every trace of his past, so shameful by that time's standards. No wonder she referred to him as "my father, my brother, my family."

Capel encouraged Chanel's artistic ambitions, and financed her now-renowned maison de couture, 31 rue Cambon. Then, he had to marry a British heiress to ensure preserving his social ascension. Coco was no heiress, but she became Capel's mistress for 9 years, until he died in a car accident.

I have reason to believe the second C in Chanel's interlaced C's logo had stood for Capel ever since. He was, according to Chanel, her one and only true love.

Chanel, however, often gave back like she was given. In 1920, at the apogee of her glory, she extended a helping hand to fallen Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, his sick wife and children, by welcoming them into her Paris's outskirts' house.

A torrid affair followed, and that's when Coco Chanel graduated from "maneater" to "Homewrecker". Coco gave no damn. As if she was trying to teach wives how to keep their husbands, by showing them what these men liked in her: her rebellion.

Her rebellion may be why she had, during the German occupation, an affair with Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a Nazi-German officer, thanks to whom she could stay at the Ritz Hotel, which would be her lieu of residence for 30 years.

Before that, Coco had the Duke of Westminster ask her for marriage, but she rebelliously declined, saying "There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel." Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen; eh, Coco?

Whether she truly was a maneater, a homewrecker, a little girl with blind ambition, Chanel reminds me a lot of my own mother. In her independence. In her defiance of social norms. In her rebellious spirit. In her genuine candor and sensitivity.

It's as if Coco Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was my own mother's soul mother. Wait! That would mean Chanel is my soul grandmother? Well, that should explain my perfectionism and willingness to tear everything apart to redo it from scratch.

We, now, just have to work on finding me a sugar daddy, or two ... or three.

Sing along to GLAM, and wish granny Coco a Happy Birthday!