The Chanel exhibition at the V&A, which opened last week to cries of ecstasy from the fashion crowd, is full of extraordinary clothes; the jewellery and darling little trouser suits had even me weak at the knees. But the designer herself is more of an absence than a presence. Staring at a photograph from 1928, in which she’s dressed in full hunting gear and sharing a joke with Winston Churchill and several beagles, I wondered again who she really was. Coco Chanel grew up poor; as a child, she spoke in patois. By the time of this picture, however, she was having an affair with the Duke of Westminster, the richest man in Britain. The capacity of human beings to reinvent themselves never ceases to fascinate me.
Back at home to write my review, I searched for her essence on my bookshelves. But even those who knew her struggle to convey the inner Chanel (the outer Chanel was easy, as long as you had an eye for boucle and buttonholes). If she was magnetic, she was also a void – or perhaps I mean a mirror.
