Mademoiselle Chanel

Yesterday, I referenced Coco Chanel's bouquet of crystal flowers. I don't know about you, but it drives me INSANE when there are written accounts of particularly beautiful things sans accompanying images. Take, for instance, Denning and Fourcade's legendary raccoon carpet, pieced together from old fur coats. Only read about it, never seen it, and can't stop building it up in my head.

So, for the sake of sanity, here is Coco Chanel's Parisian apartment, on the 3rd floor at the House of Chanel, 31 rue Cambon. It's one of my absolute favorite interiors, full of loveliness in the form of rock crystal, aged metallics, huge sculptures, and bronze deer grazing in the living room. It seems that Ms. Chanel wasn't an antique snob either, only a snob for taste: While the marble torso on the mantel is a Greek 4th century BC Aphrodite, and the carvings surrounding the mantel are from an Italian church, the crystal flowers were from a flea market!! Hervé Mille also noted something to this effect in Architectural Digest's 1977 edition of Celebrity Homes: "She never bought anything she didn't like. She didn't buy because it was valuable. She hated furniture for furniture, jewels for jewels, precious stones as stones. She was a connoisseur by intuition." Well said, M. Mille. We could all learn a thing or two from Coco.

(Enlarge images by clicking.)

Scans of Chanel's interiors from Architectural Digest Celebrity Homes, 1977.