My Lazy-But-Soignee Halloween Costume

As far as Halloween costumes go, my results always seem to fall into the category “lazy but soignée.” (I long to invest in made-to-measure pearl-white silicone mask. I’d pair it a satin robe so that each year I could go as Christiane Génessier (played by Edith Scob), the once-beautiful faceless captive daughter of a plastic surgeon in Les Yeux Sans Visage, one of my favorite films.)

Anyhow, last night I decided I was going to lazily costume myself as a 19th-century amazone, basically a snooty horseback rider. The idea came from watching Coco before Chanel. The sentimental biopic didn’t inspire me, exactly. But it did reminded me that I had a 19th-century riding top hat somewhere deep in my closet. The costume would require minimal effort for maximum grown-up sex appeal: some glittery Shu Uemura false eyelashes, lace leggings, a whip, a cape, and some Nat Sherman gold-papered cigarettes. Who knows, maybe I could score some horse tranquilizer and store it in my chatelaine? Kidding.

But when I tried on the costume and looked in the mirror I started wondering about Chanel’s age at various biographical milestones. (At 34, you start wondering about the age of the female personalities: By when did they achieve X? What about Y?) With the help of Axel Madsen’s biography, I did a little math. For starters, Coco was born in 1883. Her first Little Black Dress appeared in Vogue in 1926—she was 43! This seems at odds with the popular Coco Before Chanel conception of her as some kind of savvy, jersey-loving orphan, doesn't it? Coco Chanel was certainly no wunderkind. In fact, we may even want to think of her as a late bloomer.