At the age of six, I am already alone. Mother died, father disposits me for an American leaves ther at her aunts.
OPHAN – word paralyses her with fear
Grown up, lived and grown old alone
Lonliness has forged her character- bad tempered, bronzed my soul, which is proud, and my body which is sturdy
Solitary woman Without the delightful illusions (husband, children, grandchildren)
LITTLE COCO
Auvergne cemerwey her special place as a child ‘I knew no one there, not even the dead; I didn’t grieve for anyone; no visitor ever came there. It was a little, old country cemetery, with neglected graves and overgrown grass. I was the queen of this secret garden. ‘
“The dead are not dead as long as we think of them,” I would tell myself.
I became very fond of two unnamed tombs; these slabs of granite and basalt were my playroom, my boudoir, my den. I brought flowers there; on the humped mounds I devised hearts with cornflowers,
I confided my joys and sorrows to my silent companions without disturbing their final rest.
I like talking to myself and I don’t listen to what I’m told: this is probably due to the fact that the first people to whom I opened my heart were the dead.
Stubborn
refusals –boiled eggs
I hate to demean myself,
to submit to anyone, to humiliate myself, not to speak plainly, to give in, not
to have my own way – still present now in her gestures, hardness of voice,
steely gaze, anxious and well developed facial features. Horrible aunts for whom love is a luxury and childhood a sin. –were not wicked people but she thought they were.
Mont-dore not a terrible place, but was for her.
The attic ... what resources there are in this attic! It’s my library. I read everything. I find the fictional material there upon which my inner life will feed. Those novels taught me about life; they nourished my sensibility and my pride. I have always been proud.
Black hair- horse mane
Black eyebrows-chimney sweep.
Dark skin like lava from mountains.
Character is as black as the core of the land that hs never capitulated.
Rebellious child, lover, fashion designer. –LUCIFER
Gypes like independence
Anti-social nature
Owes her powerful build to her tough upbringing.
when I want to recognise myself, all I have to do is think of that pride
that is both my flaw and my virtue.
It irritates me when I hear people say that I’ve been lucky. No one has
worked harder than me.
“My earliest childhood”. Those
words, which are usually linked together, make me shudder.
room covered in red wallpaper.
But to be free, one needs money. I thought of nothing but the
money that opens the prison gate. The catalogues I read gave me wild dreams of
spending. I imagined myself wearing a white woollen dress; I wanted a bedroom
painted
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the allure of chanel
in white gloss, with white curtains. What a contrast this white made
with the dark house in which my aunts confined me.
At the time, I often used to think about dying; the idea of causing a
great fuss, of upsetting my aunts, of letting everyone know how wicked they
were, fascinated me. I dreamt about setting fire to the barn. They kept on
telling me that on my father’s side I came from a family of nobodies. “You
wouldn’t hold your head so high if you knew that your grandmother was a
shepherdess,”
We arranged to meet the following day. After crossing the River Allier,
beyond the footbridge, I went down into the fields and found myself in front of
the horse boxes. There was a good smell of churned-up water; you could hear the
roaring from the weir. A straight path, newly cut, stretched away, parallel to the river; sand, white railings and, in the background, the hills of the
Bourbonnais.
It is kisses, hugs, teachers and vitamins that kill children and prepare
them for being weak or unhappy.
Beneath maliciousness, there is strength; beneath pride, there is the
taste for success and the love of importance.
it’s with what cannot be taught that one succeeds.
I had run away. My grandfather believed I had returned home; my aunts
thought I was at my grandfather’s house.
I had followed M B and I was living in Compiègne. I was very bored. I
was constantly weeping.
The fairy tale was over. I was nothing but a lost child.
M B was frightened of the police. His friends told him: “Coco is too
young, send her back home.” M B would have been delighted to see me go, but I
had no home any more.
I had lied to M B. I had kept my
age a secret, telling him that I was nearly twenty: in actual fact I was
sixteen.
In Pau I met an Englishman. We made each other’s ac-
quaintance when we were out horse-trekking one day; we all lived on horseback.
The first person to take a tumble stood the others a glass of Jurançon. The wine
was young, intoxicating and quite unusual. The young man was handsome, very
tanned and attractive. More than handsome, he was magnificent. I admired his
nonchalance, and his green eyes. He rode bold and very powerful horses. I fell
in love with him. I had never loved M B . Not a word was exchanged between this
Englishman and me. One day I heard that he was leaving Pau.
I liked solitude; instinctively I loved what was beautiful and loathed
prettiness. I always told
the truth. I was very
opinionated for my age. I could tell what was fake, conventional or bad
“She looks frivolous,” he would say, “but she isn’t.” He didn’t want me
to have friends. He added: “They would damage you.”
He is the only man I have loved. He is dead. I have never forgotten him.
He was the great stroke of luck in my life; I had met a human being who did not
demoralise me. He had a very strong and unusual character, and he was a
passionate and single-minded sort of man; he shaped me, he knew how to develop
what was unique in me, at the cost of everything else.
“No. You might as well ask me to chop off a leg.” He needed me.
“Of course you’re not pretty, but I have nothing more
beautiful than you.”
. I never appeared at shows. One had to make conversation,
which terrified me. And I didn’t know how to sell; I’ve never known how to
sell. When a customer insisted on seeing me, I went and hid in
a cupboard.
”. Very young, I had realised that without money you are nothing, that
with money you can do anything. Or else, you had to depend on a husband.
money is the key to freedom
Work has a much stronger flavour than money. Ultimately, money is
nothing more than the symbol of independence
Boy Capel was well aware that he didn’t control me:
“I thought I’d given you a plaything, I gave you freedom,” he once said to me in a melancholy
voice.
I didn’t know dressmakers existed. Did I have any idea of the revolution
that I was about to stir up in clothing? By no means. One world was ending,
another was about to be
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rue cambon
born. I was in the right place; an opportunity beckoned, I took it. I
had grown up with this new century:
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