The new look that never aged

The Allure of Chanel, by Paul Morand, translated by Euan Cameron

Should anyone ever ask me that daft magazine question about who you’d invite to your dream dinner-party (‘anyone in the world, alive or dead’) my answer would be short: Mademoiselle Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, on her own, with only an ashtray between us. And maybe an ace simultaneous translator, lest my pidgin French bore her to volcanic rage. She was easily bored and, though she was a lifelong anglophile, she never liked women much.

Fantasy dinners aside, this enchanting, tiny book is the closest anyone can get to a face-to-face with Coco. It’s written in her voice (‘that voice that gushed forth from her mouth like lava’) and in her words (‘those words that crackled like dried vines’), and though it’s full of lies, omissions and contradictions, there’s enough raw truth in it to reflect the extraordinary woman who was Chanel, even though glimpsed shard by shard in a broken mirror.