As much as MacLaine is interested in Chanel the woman, rather than the wardrobe, she’s not entirely unimpressed by fashion. She wore Chanel-like styles throughout the Fifties and Sixties—“All knockoffs; I couldn’t afford the real thing”—and actually attended a Chanel show in her 20s, around the same time she was working with such Hollywood costume-design legends as Edith Head and Irene Sharaff. “They used to drape me, because I’m a dancer or used to be—I can’t even walk up the stairs now,” MacLaine recalls. “They used to put me in front of mirrors, just like a dancer, and make up shawls and evening dresses and stuff like that.”
Given its subject, this production naturally takes its look seriously. And although the house of Chanel contends it had nothing to do with the project, the set—the showroom’s mirrored walls, spiral staircase and facade on the mock rue Cambon—and the costumes, MacLaine’s in particular, bear an uncanny resemblance to the real deal. “It’s been totally scrutinized,” says Duguay of the film’s style quotient. “You see it from [Chanel’s] perspective, from the high heels to the shortening of the skirts to having the arms being able to move properly and why she puts chains at the bottom of the jackets so they hang better.”
But despite going beyond due diligence to achieve the look of the film, it seems that, like MacLaine, Duguay is less interested in the fashion angle than in Chanel’s personal story. “We brought [the fashion] in without trying to make a fashion film. I think they’re boring,” says Duguay, whose directorial experience includes the aforementioned Human Trafficking as well as the controversial Hitler: The Rise of Evil. For him, the appeal is in the theatrical qualities of Chanel’s life. “We have rags to riches and a tremendous love story—they always work on film,” explains Duguay. “And what I think is interesting is the emergence of a woman who’s defining herself in a society where women are always there for their man. They’re always dressed to please their man, and she has a very modern perspective.” That point of view is one that Chanel expressed quite publicly and poetically in her many bons mots, some of which are featured in the film and which, according to Duguay, the forceful MacLaine delivers with considerable aplomb. “She wouldn’t talk, she would pronounce,” says MacLaine, before reciting some of Chanel’s more famous quotes, such as “Fashion belongs in the street, not in the home” and “Whatever makes women free makes them creative,” as well as one of the actress’s favorites, a rather graphic statement: “My c--- belongs to the world; my heart belongs to France.” MacLaine maintains that Chanel’s conversation was “like delivering a lecture—that’s what she did. So, yes, I suppose I do fit right into that.”
