STARDUST Is Out!
Enjoy the Happy Birthday Book Excerpt
Hi History Lovers!
STARDUST, the sequel to IRISH EYES and the next installment in my American Songbook series is out today!!!
Set during the Second World War, STARDUST, opens in the summer of 1938 with Daisy Blakely (granddaughter of Rose, heroine of IRISH EYES) arriving in Paris to apprentice with the iconic fashion designer, Coco Chanel. I last wrote about Chanel here.
Crafting a fictional character from a real person, in this case one as internationally famous, deeply controversial, and recently living as Coco Chanel is a pretty big undertaking but fortunately for me, Chanel was quite the ham! Far from being reclusive or aloof, in the 1930s she was constantly out and about with Le Tout — the fascinating socialites, writers, philosophers, actors, musical composers and artists of interwar Paris who traded bon mots and knocked back stiff cocktails in the American Bar of the Hotel Ritz.
To get a feel for Chanel, not just her appearance but more importantly her speech patterns and mannerisms, I watched archived interviews, dove through contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles and of course read all the nonfiction books I could get my hands are. These three are not to be missed.
Vaughan, Hal, W., Sleeping with the Enemy. Coco Chanel’s Secret War. Alfred A. Knopf: New York. 2011.
Mazzeo, Tilar J., The Hotel on the Place Vendôme. Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Harper Collins: New York. 2014.
Picardie, Justine. Coco Chanel. The Legend and the Life. Harper Collins: New York. 2010.
STARDUST is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and absolutely everywhere books are sold!
Enjoy the excerpt.
June 1938, Paris, France
Even after all that has come to light since, I refuse to remember my first meeting with Coco Chanel as anything other than magical. I can still see myself moving through her flagship boutique and atelier on rue Cambon as if watching a film, my grandmother Rose smartly turned out in a brown and off-white speckled tweed Chanel suit, her still mostly ginger-colored curls swept into a chignon.
As the matriarch of our family, and the founder of Kavanaugh’s department store in Manhattan, Gran didn’t find it easy to get away. That early summer trip to Paris was in celebration of both my high school graduation and eighteenth birthday as well as an opportunity to scout out the competition — Au Bon Marché, Galeries Lafayette, and La Samaritaine, for starters. Opening a Kavanaugh’s in Paris, the fashion capital of the world, had long been Gran’s ambition.
That first morning over breakfast on our balcony at the Hôtel Lutetia looking out onto the Eiffel Tower, a croissant and café crème for me, and black tea and toast for Gran, she announced she had a surprise birthday present in store. No amount of my wheedling could get it out of her.
“Fine, it’s a secret then.” Still hoping to trip her up, I reached for Monmarche’s latest illustrated guidebook, On Foot in Paris, lying closed atop our table. “What shall we do first?” I fished, sure that my “surprise” must be somewhere in those printed pages.
I’d flipped through the book on the ocean liner leaving from New York, looking mostly at the photographs, and hadn’t opened it since we had docked at Le Havre the previous day. The Louvre, Napoleon’s Tomb in Les Invalides, Notre Dame Cathedral — I knew I should be panting to see those and other important historic places and yet what I really wanted was to go shopping!
Expression sheepish, she admitted, “I have one tiny bit of business to tick off, and then the rest of the day is all yours.”
It wasn’t until later, when the two of us had settled in the back of the Renault taxi, that Gran let the cat out of the bag about my surprise.
“31 rue Cambon,” she instructed the driver.
For a dazzling few seconds, I wondered if I had heard right.
Thirty-one rue Cambon was the address of Maison Chanel. The flagship fashion house was a temple to haute couture. Its founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, had been my idol since I’d saved up my allowance and bought my first issue of Vogue.
Chanel’s cotton jersey dress, launched in 1914 when fine fabrics were scarce due to the Great War, had placed her in the pantheon of great designers. Since then, she had singlehandedly transformed the landscape of women’s fashion from boned corsets and hobble skirts to fisherman’s sweaters and tailored trousers, cardigans paired with pleated skirts, and chic little black dresses. More than two decades later, women the world over embraced her signature sartorial simplicity.
Catching her sideways smile, I said, “Gran, really?”
“Yes, really,” she confirmed, reaching across the seat to squeeze my hand, hers covered in wrist length cotton gloves that hid scars from a terrible fire in a hotel where she had worked as a chambermaid not long after coming to New York. “You are to select one outfit, my darling, whatever your heart desires.”
“Oh, Gran, you’re too good to me,” I gushed, feeling dizzy with my great good fortune.
Cruising along the Champs-Élysées, an early summer sun gilding the Arc de Triomphe, my window rolled down partway so that the warm breeze ruffled my hair like playful fingers, I felt like the luckiest girl alive.
We came to the corner of the rue St-Honoré and rue Cambon where the road opened onto a square in front of a large domed church. Our driver turned right onto rue Cambon, and my heartbeat picked up in anticipation. Craning to look past Gran to the view outside the passenger window, I counted five consecutive Chanel storefronts, at numbers 23, 25, 27, 29 and the flagship, number 31. Unlike New York, where we were frightfully fond of neon signage, discreet black lettering called out “CHANEL” from above plain white awnings.
Our taxi drew up to the curb, and I scrambled out, inelegant in my hurry, my skirt catching on the door handle. I managed to extricate myself without damage, and Gran and I approached the entrance to the boutique.
A doorman stood sentry, a big pink-cheeked fellow in a green ulster who looked like he’d be more at home on Gran’s native Aran Islands than at a fancy French fashion house. He touched his forelock in an old-fashioned show of respect and held the door for us to enter.
Feeling as if I were about to step upon sacred ground, I followed Gran inside, the boutique smaller than I’d envisioned and thrillingly chic, a cocoon of cream-colored walls, glass cases, and mirrors, the air perfumed with what I instantly recognized as Chanel No. 5. Black-clad saleswomen circulated, assisting shoppers and tidying the displays of handbags, shoes, gloves, hats, scarves, and the costume jewelry that Mademoiselle had popularized for daywear — long ropes of faux pearls and glass beads, chunky cuff bracelets, statement brooches and dramatic gold chains.
Gran approached a salesgirl stationed at the perfume counter near the front of the shop. Behind her, mirrored shelves held bottles of No. 5, by then the world’s most famous fragrance .
“Mrs. Rose Kavanaugh Blakely and Miss Daisy Blakely from New York,” Gran said, and that’s when it hit me.
We weren’t only here to shop. Gran’s “tiny bit of business” was with the great Chanel herself!
They had met once before in 1931 when Chanel came to America to design costumes for the movie mogul, Samuel Goldwyn. Disgusted with the vulgarity of Hollywood, she had left after a month and taken a train to New York where she had spent several days touring the major Manhattan department stores, including Kavanaugh’s. Gran couldn’t have been more thrilled if royalty had visited.
“Mademoiselle Coco is expecting you, madame. Un instant, s’il vous plaît.” She picked up the handset of a gold and black house telephone and dialed.
A husky female voice issued forth from the phone. A few words were exchanged in French, and then the girl set the receiver back in its cradle and stepped out from behind the counter.
“Come with me, s’il vous plaît.”
We followed her through a discreet inner doorway connecting the boutique to the atelier.
“Mademoiselle Coco will be down shortly,” she told us and left.
We stood inside a gallery of unadorned ivory walls and shiny-black floors. Racks of white-cotton garment bags hung from gilt rails, veiling what remained of the most recent couture collection, or so I supposed.
A mirrored spiral staircase sprung from the room’s center. I’d seen that staircase before, photographed for fashion magazines. It was from those beige-carpeted steps that Chanel staged her biannual fashion shows.
Feeling as if I were dreaming, I drifted over. The sense of being watched had me raising my gaze. A dark-haired pixie of indeterminate age stood at the top, one hand resting on the banister. Seeing me, she began her descent, the faceted mirrors multiplying her slight, chicly clad form, which seemed to float toward me.
La Grande Mademoiselle herself. Of course, she would make an entrance.
She wore one of her famous flecked tweed suits, and a bolero hat pinned atop her wavy chin-length bob. Both wrists were garlanded with gold bracelets that jangled with each downward step. Hanging around her slender neck, threaded on a white grosgrain ribbon, was a pair of silver scissors, along with a necklace of pearls the size of quail eggs.
She stopped at the second to last step and seized my shoulders, her grip so steely that I very nearly dropped my handbag.
“Grandes épaules, une beauté!” she exclaimed, the ferocity of her dark gaze bordering on frightening.
I caught “big” and “beauty” but not the rest and looked to Gran for guidance.
Coming to my rescue, she explained, “Mademoiselle Chanel says you have great shoulders and are a beautiful young woman.”
Chanel’s scarlet lips spread into a smile. “You know French, Madame Blakely?”
Ever modest, Gran admitted, “I’ve picked up a word or two over the years and have encouraged Daisy to do the same.”
Though I was a lackluster student, French was the one high school subject to which I’d applied myself, if only so I could decipher the fashion captions in the issues of Vogue France when I got my hands on them.
Gran gestured to me. “Allow me to present my granddaughter, Daisy Blakely.”
“Enchantée.” Chanel held out her hand.
Square palmed and big knuckled, it didn’t quite fit with her petite, svelte frame and yet I was so awed to be in her presence that for half a minute I considered kissing her ring.
Gran’s nudge brought me back from my stunned state. I took the offered hand, her steely grip swallowing mine in a brief but firm shake.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mademoiselle.” I hesitated and then volunteered, “We almost met once before.”
“Vraiment?” Dark half-moon brows steepled; the black-brown eyes beneath stayed skeptical.
“When you visited our store in New York,” Gran answered for me. “Daisy was just eleven years old, and adamant that she must meet La Grande Mademoiselle. Unfortunately, she came down with chicken pox the day before your visit.”
Gran’s Irish charm worked its usual wonders. Mademoiselle’s face softened.
“And now the bud has flowered into a beautiful young woman.” Stepping off the landing, she ran her gaze over me as if cataloging every freckle, which no amount of Coty’s Air-Spun face powder could conceal for long.
Looking from me to Gran, she said, “We will have lunch and get to know each other, but first I will take you on a little tour.”
She turned and started up the beige-carpeted stairs.
Following her up, Gran behind me, I saw that each mirrored vertical pane was set at a different angle, fracturing our reflections as if we were the subjects of a Surrealist painting.
We stepped off onto the third-floor atelier where she employed more than one hundred seamstresses known as petites mains, “little hands.” She led us into the first of several workrooms, large and square with tall windows overlooking rue Cambon. Seamstresses in black work smocks and neatly pinned back hair sat at their workstations, their fingers flying.
The babble of French subsided when they saw us. Chanel walked to the front of the room and announced, “Voici Madame Rose Kavanaugh Blakely and her granddaughter, Mademoiselle Daisy Blakely of Kavanaugh’s Department Store in New York.”
Murmured greetings in French chorused, mostly bonjours and enchantées, and then she introduced her senior staff, starting with Madame Angèle Aubrey, her right-hand woman for more than thirty years, and Madame Giselle Millet, her première atelier, chief seamstress, for nearly as long.
“Not everyone can qualify as a petite main,” she told Gran and me afterwards. “Only those who have completed their studies. An average of ten years of experience is required to attain the professional level,” she added with palpable pride.
“Such diligence and discipline,” Gran remarked. “You are to be commended, mademoiselle.”
Chanel accepted the compliment with a spare nod and led us back out to the stairs. We descended one flight to her private residence guarded by mirrored double doors.
A dark foyer led into the apartment. Passing a Louis XVI-style chaise longue upholstered in white satin, I recognized it as the one Mademoiselle had posed in for Vogue the previous year, and a shivery thrill shot through me. The famous German American fashion photographer, Horst P. Horst, had captured her in profile, looking dreamily off into the distance, dressed all in black, a hairbow atop her wavy, chin-length dark hair, an artful tangle of gold chains carelessly cascading below her breasts. Holding a half-smoked cigarette between her thumb and index finger as a man might do, she epitomized the modern woman I desperately aspired to be.
Like the boutique, the apartment was more compact than I had expected, three rooms furnished in a palette of cream and beige: a dining room, parlor, and pocket-sized study with a rolltop desk and shelves of books, their tooled leather spines picking up the golden hue of the wallpaper. Unlike so many successful self-made people who lard their homes with impersonal luxury, Mademoiselle Coco seemed to have an intimate connection to every object on display. Before sitting down to lunch, she took us through, pointing out her treasures.
A gilded Russian icon was a gift from the composer, Stravinsky.
“I first met Igor in 1913 when his ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées,” she told us, straightening the picture frame. “It was as if the theater had been visited by an earthquake, the boos, hisses, and shouted insults at times drowning out the music. The critics called it the work of a madman, but I recognized his genius even then.”
The oil painting of a single shaft of wheat hanging above the beige suede sofa was by Salvador Dalí.
“Salvo stays at La Pausa, my villa on the Riviera, when he needs quiet to work,” she said.
The burgundy lacquered Coromandel screens in every room were from Chanel’s great love, the English polo player, Arthur “Boy” Capel, who had died in 1919 when his motorcar crashed at Puget-sur-Argens on his way to Cannes to spend Christmas with her.
“Boy knew I detested doors, “she said, her expression wistful. “I use them to hide all the exits so my guests will forget to leave.”
Conspicuously absent was a bedroom.
As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I like my privacy; I never sleep where I work. I keep a suite at the Ritz for sleeping.” She walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window and pulled back the drapes. “Come look.”
It took me a minute to realize she meant me.
At Gran’s nudge, I joined her at the window. Looking out across rue Cambon, I saw the back of a massive building of gleaming limestone and royal blue canopies.
“Voilà, the Hôtel Ritz. The Place Vendôme side where I have my suite was an eighteenth-century palais. But I always go in and out through the rue Cambon side. That way I do not have to see the Italienne’s vulgar shop,” she added, making a face as if a noxious odor had invaded the room.
“The Italienne?” I echoed, again looking to Gran for guidance.
“I believe Mademoiselle refers to Elsa Schiaparelli,” Gran answered evenly. “She has her atelier on Place Vendôme.”
Mademoiselle Coco let the curtain drop and turned back to us. “She calls me the Hat Maker, can you imagine?” She sniffed, shaking her head in disgust. “I ought to call her the Sweater Maker.”
I had read somewhere that the Italian born Schiaparelli had got her start in New York, where she had lived for six years in a shabby Greenwich Village walkup supporting herself and her polio-afflicted daughter by selling her hand-knit sweaters.
“But I am talking too much,” Mademoiselle continued. “I talk vehemently, I know I can be unbearable,” she insisted, despite Gran and me assuring her it wasn’t so. “You must be hungry. Americans are always hungry, always obsessed with food, eating too much, and eating badly. Come, we will eat well.”
A square walnut table dominated the dining room, a brace of bronze lions set at its center. On impulse, I reached out and patted their heads.
Slipping into her chair at the head of the table, Chanel said, “I am Leo, the fifth house of the zodiac.”
We took our seats. Two maids materialized through a side door carrying platters of food, followed by a butler who circulated with a white cloth-wrapped bottle of champagne, a decadence Gran declined but which, being newly turned eighteen, I accepted with enthusiasm.
The lunch was delicious, a feast and very French. Several dishes like duck liver pâté and a savory bacon and cheese pie called Quiche Lorraine were new to me. Salad Niçoise I’d had before, though never one this tasty. There was also an assortment of cheeses, a few of which I recognized or thought I did. I tried some of each, skipping back and forth between soft and hard and mild and pungent selections, not then knowing I was meant to sample them in order. Helping myself to more of the brie, I caught Mademoiselle Coco watching me.
“You are enjoying your déjeuner, mademoiselle?” she asked, smiling thinly.
Mouth full, the best I could do was nod.
Gran saved me by speaking up. “Your chef is superb. I wonder if he might be persuaded to share some of his recipes?”
Sipping her wine, Mademoiselle Coco admitted, “I have everything brought over from the Ritz. I must. I have no kitchen.”
Dessert consisted of shell-shaped miniature sponge cakes called madeleines and apple and caramel tartines. Mademoiselle Coco took a bite of tartine and then pushed her plate away.
Reaching into her jacket pocket, she brought out an octagonal silver-and-gold cigarette box engraved with a coat of arms. She nonchalantly slipped a cigarette between her scarlet lips and lit it, and I fought to keep my mouth from falling open.
Both Gran and my mother were adamant about no smoking at the table. Whenever Grandpa Adam and my dad indulged in the occasional cigar, they were banished to the study or patio.
Mademoiselle Coco held the case out to me. “Like one?”
Gran answered for me. “Daisy doesn’t smoke.”
“How very American,” Mademoiselle remarked, blowing an acrid jet toward the high curved ceiling.
Afterwards, she took us to the mirrored couture salon where three folding chairs were set out. Pleasantly tipsy from the single glass of champagne I’d drunk, I sat next to Gran, my brain blanketed in a lovely, soft buzzing that made everything seem mellow and right.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Madame Aubrey roll in a Victrola on casters. Outside the door, Madame Millet marshaled a group of models to fall into line.
Chanel slipped into the empty chair on my left. At her signal, a record started up, “Isn’t It Romantic?” sung by the French crooner and actor, Maurice Chevalier.
Heart racing, I watched as the mannequins entered one by one and made their way to the front of the room. Tall and willowy, swan-necked and slim-hipped, each girl was more lovely and graceful than the last, their sleek, cropped coiffures putting my shoulder-length mop to shame, their perfectly penciled eyebrows and red lips straight out of a glamour magazine.
But it was the clothes that I coveted, Chanel creations from previous collections, some of which I had seen in magazines. There were jersey suits, dresses with matching jackets, daytime-to-cocktails ensembles, and lastly, an off-the-shoulder sleeveless gown in white lace I couldn’t take my eyes off.
Leaning in, I whispered to Gran, “It’s like a dream. I keep feeling like if I pinch myself, I’ll wake up.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Not a dream, darling girl. Every young lady should spend some time in Paris. This is your time. Savor every moment.”
The last model reached the front of the room, and I popped up from my seat, clapping like I was in the stands at Yankee Stadium.
Chanel rose and joined her models at the front of the room. “Avec plaisir, I welcome Mademoiselle Blakely to our Chanel family. In one week, she will begin as my apprentice, assisting with the spring and fall collections.”
Wondering if the champagne had hurt my hearing, I whipped my head around to Gran.
Beaming at me, she said, “Happy birthday, darling.”
Copyright © 2025 Hope C. Tarr. All rights reserved.
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Save the Date
On Saturday, March 8th, I’ll sign copies of STARDUST and IRISH EYES at the Barnes & Noble in Brick, NJ, from noon to 3pm. Details here.
Happy Book Release Day!
It hit my kindle at midnight.
Happy book birthday! :D