ON the wild western edge of Scotland, just shy of Cape Wrath, a river runs through heather-covered hillsides towards the dark waters of Loch Stack. This might be an unlikely place to go in search of Gabrielle Chanel, the legendary French couturière, but it was to this rugged terrain that I travelled as her biographer and discovered a previously unknown aspect of her life. Now that the V&A is launching its exhibition, ‘Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto’—the first retrospective in the UK to celebrate the work of this visionary designer—it seems an appropriate moment to return to the Highlands and explore the ways in which she was influenced by her time there.
Chanel’s trips to Scotland were a consequence of her love affair with the 2nd Duke of Westminster (known to his family and friends as Bendor, after his grandfather’s Derby-winning stallion). The pair had been introduced by a mutual friend in Monte Carlo at the end of 1923 and, by the spring of 1924, they had embarked on a relationship that brought Chanel to the forefront of London society. Widely regarded as the richest man in Britain, with an
