Notes on an icon
Coco Chanel’s influence on fashion is without doubt. We look at how she also made her mark on the world of interior design
Open your wardrobe, and it’s highly likely that Coco Chanel influenced several items within; and perhaps the same can be said of the pieces in your home. While she made her riches from fashion, Chanel was a complete style icon, who put as much care and attention into her living spaces as she did into her collections. Her homes played host to myriad artists, designers, politicians, poets, royals and entrepreneurs, and her influence crossed continents and design genres. Today, you can only visit the lavish apartment she decorated in Paris by special invitation.
As iconic as her name is now, Gabrielle Bonheur ‘Coco’ Chanel spent her formative years in poverty. Born in 1883, she grew up in an austere convent in the south of France, following the death of her mother. Although she found paid employment as a seamstress after this, Chanel spent her nights performing in a local cafe- cum- cabaret, where she used her seductive charms to entertain well-to- do army officers. It was here that she met affluent textile heir Étienne Balsan. She became his lover, developing a taste for fine clothes and jewellery, while regularly partying with his wealthy social set. In 1908, Chanel began an affair with Balsan’s friend Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, who bought her a lavish apartment in Paris and, noticing her flair for design, set her up with a shop selling hats in 1910.
After a string of successful fashion boutiques, and following Capel’s tragic death in 1919, Chanel purchased her now-famous property at 31 Rue Cambon, Paris. She personally transformed it into an emporium of design – where an ingenious use of space allowed her clothes to shine. With a fashion boutique on the ground floor, a couture studio on the first, a private apartment on the second and her studio at the top, the entire space exuded Chanel’s resplendent look.
‘An interior is the natural projection of a soul,’ she once said – for Chanel, this meant her iconic use of black and white with natural beige hues and plenty of gold. No matter how opulent her accessories, this reserved colour palette meant that her look never seemed overdone. In her private rooms, she paired Asian antiques with totally bespoke new pieces: a chandelier made up of interlocking number fives and sofas covered in quilted leather (echoing her classic ‘2.55’ bag) or tan suede. This was an unusual material for upholstery at the time but is now much copied.
Chanel’s collection of Coromandel screens were used as wall panels and to divide up her apartment. As you might imagine, this space was a glorious concoction of comfort and luxury: from the elegant displays of rock crystal and sculpture, to her gilded frames and mirrors. Her use of reflection was especially inventive – she devised a faceted mirrored spiral staircase which, as well as looking beautifully art deco, allowed her to sit in one spot and keep a watchful eye over the entire store. Symmetry was also important to Chanel. Animal ornaments – from lions to frogs – sat in pairs, while curtains dropped perfectly straight with no ruffles or flourishes.
Her other interiors – including a fishing lodge she styled for the Duke of Westminster (her lover) and a villa in the south of France – are imbued with these same interior design rules which, in turn, are an extension of her sense of style that continues to captivate the world today.