Chanel No. 5… at Palais de Tokyo…
CHANEL… No. 5…
Coco… Chanel‘s…
Iconic…
Perfume…
“Une historie d’amour“…
A… love story…
A… “Reminiscence“…
As Proust… called it…
Of a… time lost…
A bereavement… which was never…
Forgotten…
A… memory…
Forever… cherished…
Of a love interrupted… by loss…
Arthur “Boy“ Capel… Gabriel Chanel‘s first great love’s influence on her… was enormous.
He developed her taste for literature… esoterism… a fascination for astrology. They were both superstitious… and hypnotised by numbers…
“No. 5… ‘5’… my lucky number. It will be the No. 5 of Chanel”…
Coco Chanel
Capel… flamboyant… seductive… irresistible… was hugely attracted to Chanel…
Their affair in 1908 ended on the eve of the 1920’s. A married man… it was upon leaving Gabrielle in Paris… while travelling to the French Riviera to join his wife on the 22nd of December… that he died in a car accident…
Devastated… Chanel visited the very spot where her lover’s accident took place…
She mourned… the love of her life…
In… silence…
However…
Her… grief…
Her sentimental… “dialogue“… transcending death itself… lead to her instinctive intuitive creation of her first perfume… Chanel No. 5… a “symbol”… of her pain… her emptiness… the loss of her love…
In her grief… the perfume “of eternity”… was Chanel‘s honoured gift… to herself…
Visiting the… “No. 5… Culture Chanel” exhibition… at the Palais de Tokyo…
I could palpate this great woman’s… iconic presence…
“In order to be irreplaceable… one must always be different“…
Coco Chanel
Her close friendships with the most talented… brilliant… innovative… masters of the era… Cocteau… Picasso… Apollinaire… Stravinsky… Dali and Diaghilev… enriched her immensely and strengthened her belief in modernity…
Her creative genius… hailed and sustained by the creation of her Chanel No. 5 perfume… placed it up there with the avant garde creations of the current movements of Cubism… Dadaism and Surrealism…
With its clean-cut lines and double “ƆC” signature… Chanel‘s perfume bottle… is a work of art…
An… artistic creation…
An… innovative one…
It was the first perfume bottle… to be named after its creator…
Coco Chanel‘s…
No. 5…
A… voyage…
A… destiny…
That… surpassed…
“Time… and space”…
The creation of… a visionary…
“She has, through a sort of miracle, worked in the world of fashion, following rules that only seemed valid for painters, musicians and poets… She imposed the invisible… She imposed the nobility of silence on social commotion.“… Jean Cocteau
Conquering… bereavement…
The… legendary…
Coco… Chanel…
Created…
An… eternal…
Legend…
I… am…
An… infinite…
Admirer…
a.