Boardwalking Elegance

“As long as an idea is good, the price doesn’t matter,” said the visionary French industrialist André Citroën. Born André-Gustave on February 5, 1878, at Rue Laffite in the 9th arrondissement, Paris, his father Lévie was a wealthy diamond merchant of Dutch descent who was well acquainted with Parisian bourgeois society. Receiving cables from South Africa about the Kimberley Diamond Rush tempted Lévie to risk much of his capital to invest in a venture that would unfortunately have crippling consequences for him. Deemed by Victor Hugo as operating on the same high educational pedestals as the Legion of Honor, and the Institute, the illustrious École Polytechnique located in Paris Rue Descartes accepted André after he showed an encouraging aptitude for design at school. André would not only receive education from the finest engineering minds; it was an elite establishment, thus enabling him to befriend individuals belonging to advantageous upper-class circles, many of whom were or would become members of the exalted Automobile Club de France.

On graduating from École Polytechnique in 1900, Citroën spent three years in the army, pioneered a version of herringbone gears, patented them, co-founded Hinstin Freres Citroën & Cie, resurrected Mors (automobiles), designed and built the steering gears for Olympic-class Ocean liners (including the Titanic), and then spent everything he had to set up Société d’engrenages Citroën, which manufactured the largest gears ever made in a factory in Paris! And that was all before World War I broke out in 1914, when he masterminded the production of 35,000 shells every day from his Quay de Jevel, Paris, factory, which for the allies was a war-breaking intervention. And by the end of the decade, Citroën launched his first car, the iconic Citroen Type A.

Citroën’s tenacity in sticking to his life morals and his success was in part through trusting his immense talent, but it wouldn’t have been possible without a selection of the old guards that he met at École Polytechnique and Automobile Club de France, amongst other genteel establishments. One of those members was the Paris-based Armenian lapidary Atanik Eknayan, who supported Citroën, then chairman of the struggling Mors, by reimbursing the sums due to Théodore Schneider’s eponymous car brand Th. Schneider and his heavy vehicle production company in Lyon. Despite Paris being under water for two months in 1910, reminiscent of Venice, Eknayan was given the honourable task by the Transvaal Diamond Mining Company, ironically cutting the 30.62ct Blue Heart diamond, which still holds a reputation as the most beautiful jewel.

Citroën once opined, “As painters and sculptors go to Rome, the birthplace of contemporary art, engineers must go to America, the birthplace of big industry.” His sentiment of America was certainly enhanced after inspecting Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant in Detroit, but around that time, there was another destination nearer home, in fact a mere 2 ½ hours from Paris by train, that was attracting Citroën to decamp for different reasons. Immersed in a second wave of Belle Époque decadence, he witnessed a scene that merged nobility and European aristocrats with a faster, avant-garde, and carefree set, without in any way degrading the ‘kingdom of elegance’, more formally known as Deauville. Fellow freemasons including the Duke of Windsor, Winston Churchill and the Aga Khan III would partake of the growing sophistication, further bolstered by the recently built spectacular waterfront Casino Barrière Deauville and Hôtel Barrière Le Normandy Deauville. Additionally, two fashion designers, Jean Patou, dubbed in America as “the most elegant man in Europe,” and Gabriella “Coco” Chanel, the trailblazer, grasped and reacted to the authentic lifestyle essence of Deauville, which wasn’t primarily Haute Couture-type outfits from the previous century, but apparel allowing freedom of movement while exuding the superior definition of casual chic.

By 1925, the year F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, Deauville had become the foremost French seaside town in which to be seen. The glitterati would parade along the wooden promenade “Le Planches,” providing Chanel with the perfect backdrop to showcase how her pioneering designs had liberated wealthy women. If there’s a moment that exemplifies Deauville’s unfettered vitality and all-encompassing freedom of expression, it’s the beautiful and much admired American-born French entertainer Josephine Baker kneeling down on “Le Planches,” with immaculately dressed onlookers behind her, stroking the head of Chiquita, her young female pet Cheetah.

Across the street at Casino Barrière Deauville, Citroën, having regularly absconded from the belle époque-themed Villa Les Abeilles that he frequented every summer, found his natural habitat of risking small fortunes, bolstered only by like-minded gamblers such as Patou and the Aga Khan III. The latter’s voracious appetite for the tables led his ex-wife Jane-Andrée to exclaim, with perhaps a hint of sourness, “The Aga was such a reckless gamester, that I am sure he would have staked me, and my jewels at play”.  

However, in addition to lavishing wealth on glamorous women in the Deauville vicinity and placing large bets in the casino, the Aga Khan had found an excellent destination to indulge his horse racing hobby, achieving results in a very short time. August was, and still is, the peak month that displays Deauville’s deep-rooted association with well-bred thoroughbreds, as followers and the horse racing fraternity are enthralled by the horse racing Meeting de Deauville Barriere festival and Arqana’s flagship yearling sale that would provide The Aga Khan with a classic winner in the shape of Pot-Au-Feu, who landed the Prix du Jockey Club in 1924. The following year, at the yearling sale, a poignant purchase was made for several reasons. The breeder and vendor was one of history’s most famous diamond cutters in the form of the aforementioned Ekyavan, and the buyer who gave 57,000 francs for the colt was Georges Wildenstein of Wildenstein & Co., who would become the most influential art dealers of the 20^th century. In the history of French horse racing, the new colt, named Licteur, won the Prix de la Forêt as a two-year-old and wore the recently acquired dark blue and light blue cap, whose silks are still among the most recognizable in Flat Racing today.

In Europe, Bucharest is nicknamed “Little Paris,” and Beirut, in its heyday, was dubbed the Paris of the Middle East, and Paris owns more nicknames than most other capital cities. One of those is the City of Light, a tag that is subject to a real variety of theories, but in 1925, Citroën received arguably the greatest recognition for a Parisian when three sides of the Eiffel Tower were illuminated with his name and would last for nine years. It is deemed to have enhanced the City of Light nickname, but on the ground, Citroën continued to invest astronomical sums into the business, and unlike other mass-producing French automobile competitors, he was dependent on importing special high-quality steel from the US for the bodies. But then the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended abruptly after the Wall Street Crash in 1929. The shortfall for Citroen was an unexpected double whammy, as the import tariffs raised the cost of materials by 30% and the depression cut sales by 30%. As Citroën had always maintained, he had yet another idea to combat this severe financial headache, and the price didn’t faze him. In between discarding bankruptcy to bet on a new car (the Traction Avant), he continued to take his children to the annual Concours d’Elegance held by the Deauville Automobile Club, where his children would enter their little car, and in 1930 they were accompanied by the iconoclastic French entertainer Maurice Chevalier.

In 1934, Citroen admitted bankruptcy. For a captain of industry, outgoing, and well-dressed individual, it pained him tremendously to relinquish his great summers spent at Villa Les Abeilles. He passed away the following year, but it didn’t take long for his brilliance to shine again when his invention, the world’s first monocoque-bodied, front-wheel drive car, the Traction Avant, then owned by Michelin, would later become one of the world’s most influential cars ever built.

In Deauville the party carried on without him and without a backward glance. There were certain modish characters who ignited and helped prolong this unbelievably chic atmosphere, and one of those was the English-born intellectual, politician, tycoon, polo-player, and lover and muse of Chanel. Boy Capel was a wealthy dandy, he would stroll along the beach in high-waisted double-pleated trousers with a slim-fitted black short-sleeved polo shirt, the ultimate casual look, and it could be topped off with Chanel siting on one shoulder, with only Capel’s combed black hair for balance. Capel was not only responsible for giving financial backing for Chanel’s first fashion boutique on between the casino and the Normandy Hotel in 1913, but before he was instrumental in founding the Deauville Polo Club in 1907. The two trademarks of Deauville would only elevate the glamour swirling around the resort, and it was destined to sour further with the first Deauville Grand Prix in 1936, however, for multiple disasters it wouldn’t run again. 

As eluded to, Chanel masterfully introduced a new, yearned-for aesthetic that embraced simplicity, comfort, and elegance. Last week, France lost a slightly divisive personality, but Alain Delon’s legacy as France’s greatest movie star is likely to endure for a very long time. He was blessed with undeniably irresistible looks, an attribute that played more than a significant part in his fascinating life but was interesting; he never tried too hard to stand out as an arbiter of fashion. Like Chanel’s uniforms, he always maintained that simplicity with his outfits, which, if selected and combined with the right pieces, can go a very long way. Alexander Kraft, renowned for his use of a limited palette, infuses this style into the designs of his revered brand, Alexander Kraft Monte Carlo. Unlike sections of Saint Tropez, Deauville has eschewed bling, and the pieces of AK MC, all crafted from sui generis fabrics, embody the relaxed elegance that Deauville is renowned for.

On the subject of enigmatic movie stars, Deauville has commemorated the names who have attended the town’s film festival on the boardwalk of Les Planches. Deauville swiftly set itself apart from the wealthy New Yorkers who travelled to Long Island for their summer vacations during the Gilded Age, gaining popularity among Americans and vice versa. Running from September 6-15, the Deauville American Film Festival is celebrating its 50^th anniversary, and it will be a week with no shortage of unbridled artistic glamour, a trait that has never left the Queen of the Normandy coast.