From the Bain Collection on Library of Congress, Creative Commons, Flickr, so I can reprint it with attribution. A Helen Gould, philanthropist of New York is in a hat shop.
I posted that picture because I am now watching Coco Before Chanel on my TV. I bought it off the satellite. I saw it in the theatre. It’s in French and they speak very very fast. I recently read a bio about her: it’s all very interesting in relation to Tighsolas. In fact, the woman is emblematic of all that went on with respect to women in the era. But she is also an BIG EXCEPTION. Beautiful, ambitious and smart, she made her way, with the help of a man’s money, and then she paid him back every cent.
Coco Chanel is a character or should I say, ghostly presence in my story, Flo in the City about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era in Canada based on the letters of www.tighsolas.ca.
Before I stumbled on the Nicholson letters I knew little about the 1910 era in Canada, well, next to nothing. All that mattered to me was La Belle Epoque. The era was born in Paris, where the first motor car was born, where they had the 1900 exposition.
So in my first chapter of Flo in the City, available in first rough draft form on this blog, I have Flo joke about moving to France and starting a hat shop.
Marion jokes that she would need to improve her French.
You know, in 1912, Marion was invited to go to Europe with family friends, but she did not have the money. These friends bring her back a present, a real Parisienne blouse.
