Justine Picardie @ 5x15 - On Coco Chanel

February 28th 2011, The Tabernacle
Justine Picardie is a bestselling author, Sunday Telegraph Magazine columnist and former features editor of British Vogue. She has spent the last decade puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel. In her acclaimed biography published in 2010 she unravelled the history of the incredible woman who created the way we look now. Picardie brings the mysterious Gabrielle Chanel out of hiding, to celebrate her great achievements, at the same time as casting a clear eye over her transgressions. Using images she shows how the work of Coco was informed by her experiences in a convent as a child. Picardie also describes how close her links to Great Britain were and how under appreciated this fact is. Justine Picardie is the author of two novels and four non-fiction titles including 2002's bestselling non-fiction memoir, If The Spirit Moves You, her first novel, Wish I May and Daphne.

[@yoandmest4747]

Justine Picardie's book is very well written, documented with amazing sketches from KL. She should however have pointed out that most of the signs ( double Cs, stars etc) had already been covered in several books before her. I suppose she knows it and one of the most relevant and probably accurate books ever written about Miss Chanel is "L'irrégulière" by Edmonde Charles-Roux. She had been asked ( amongst other writers and biographers) by Coco Chanel to write her memoirs but to cover up her difficult youth, hardship etc. Charles-Roux didn't not agree and to be even more precise, Coco had approached Mrs Charles-Roux and seeing that she would get nothing unless she told the whole truth ( important for biographers)- she only wrote it after her death. It was later re-edited and re-written ( Charles-Roux) refusing to add pictures only so she re-wrote the book once again.
This said, Justine Picardie's book is a very well written and documented biography that I often pick up, read passages. She has definitely written a wonderful testimony and it's a book I shall treasure knowing that it was written in Coco Chanel's apartment by a very good and meticulous biographer. I think she's captured the "spirit" of Coco Chanel and she is to my knowledge the first to have published unseen pictures of Coco Chanel and focused on this undeniable link between Gabrielle and England because, without England and her connections to the Duke of Westminster, Boy Capel and Winston Churchill, I don't think she would have had this success. I think Coco Chanel was as much English as she was French and her pragmatism, "less is more" attitude towards fashion could make her even more English than French. Once again the book is superb and I hope Justine will write more such biographies because she has that gift so many other biographers don't have of making you stop and think, feel and reflect on the personality of who she's writing about. Xxxx