< Previous The INTERVIEW 80 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 Cardigan, Dhs7,645, Alexander McQueen HBA_151_068to083_MayCalamawy_11417429.indd 8002/11/2020 01:34:54 PM The INTERVIEW 81 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 Coat, POA, Marc Jacobs; Hat, POA, Stephen Jones for Marc Jacobs HBA_151_068to083_MayCalamawy_11417429.indd 8102/11/2020 01:35:05 PM The INTERVIEW 82 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 Sweater, Dhs4,370; Skirt, POA, both Jil Sander. Sunglasses, Dhs1,535, Bottega Veneta HBA_151_068to083_MayCalamawy_11417429.indd 8202/11/2020 01:35:13 PM83 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 The INTERVIEW Top, Dhs9,500; Skirt, Dhs6,800, both Valentino Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Art Director: Oscar Yáñez. Make-up: Daniele Piersons at Art Department. Hair: Lisa Marie Powel at Art Department. Set Designer: Lucy Holt. Photography Assistants: Aaron Morganstein and Kinsey. Digital Tech: Sean Macgillivray. Editorial Producer: Elle Hutchinson. Local Producer: Enrique Salcedo. COVID Manager: Shelby Paine. Assistant on set: Alicia Lee HBA_151_068to083_MayCalamawy_11417429.indd 8302/11/2020 01:35:25 PM The FASHION 84 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 As the new face of Chanel No 5, Marion Cotillard joins the ranks of numerous leading ladies, starting with Coco herself. She talks to Lydia Slater about her passion Photography by SERGE LEBLON Styling by SHEILA SINGLE THE FIFTH ELEMENT for activism, her dedication to her craft and the lessons she learnt from lockdown HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8402/11/2020 01:42:02 PM The FASHION 85 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 Blouse, Dhs6,400; Shorts, Dhs6,200, Chanel HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8502/11/2020 01:42:13 PM The FASHION 86 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 Top, Dhs5,600; Skirt, Dhs12,130; Bag, POA, Chanel HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8602/11/2020 01:42:25 PM The FASHION 87 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 yet its creation is as shrouded in myth and mystique as the history of Gabrielle Chanel herself. The scent became her signature; it was sprayed by an assistant at the entrance of the Rue Cambon building, home to the Maison’s original boutique, to herald her arrival every day, and she would scatter it on the glowing embers of her fi replace… Hers was the original ‘face’ of Chanel No 5: dressed in a gauzy black gown, leaning on the mantelpiece of her Ritz apartment, she appeared in Bazaar in a 1937 advertisement. ‘Her Perfume No 5 is like the soft music that underlies the playing of a love scene,’ ran the accom- panying copy. ‘It kindles the imagination, indelibly fi xes the scene in the memories of the players.’ Little wonder if the women sub- sequently chosen to embody the fragrance have tended to be actresses, including Ali MacGraw, Catherine Deneuve, Carole Bouquet, Nicole Kidman and Audrey Tautou. The latest face seems the most apposite of all. Like Chanel her- self, Marion Cotillard is exquisite, celebrated, utterly French and somehow unknowable, despite her international fame – or perhaps, indeed, because of it? “When I choose a character in a fi lm, I always want to explore a different kind of person, someone who is very far from myself,” she tells me. In the course of a career that started with Luc Besson’s action-comedy franchise Taxi and has encompassed playing the love interest in feelgood romances such as Midnight in Paris and A Good Year, she has also portrayed a double amputee in Rust and Bone, a refugee in The Immigrant and a Lady Macbeth maddened by grief. Most famously, of course, there was her portrayal of an addicted Edith Piaf in the 2007 biopic La Vie en Rose, which won her the fi rst ever Best Actress Oscar awarded to a performance in French. Cotillard’s chameleon-like ability to subsume her personality into her roles has drawn much admiration from her fellow thespians – Cate Blanchett has called her ‘a genius’ – but it does mean that I have very little idea what (or whom) to expect when I log onto Zoom for our talk. For a few minutes, I am alone, gazing into a book-lined Parisian study while two extravagantly hirsute gentlemen stare sternly back at me from a large oil painting. Then Cotillard makes her entrance, swirling into view in a fl owing white Biyan dress, patterned with fl owers, and I understand immediately why Nicole Kidman once described her as possessing a ‘fairy quality’. M Despite having spent the entire day shooting Bazaar’s fashion story, Cotillard seems upbeat and energised, her huge, expressive eyes sparkling, her skin aglow. She is clearly delighted with her new appointment as a Chanel ambassador, having had a long association with the brand. “It felt like a reunion… It has accompanied me during some very pivotal and important moments in my career.” Lyrically, she describes her introduction to Chanel No 5. “I was a teenager, around 15. My mum bought it for a British friend because she wanted to give her the ultimate French present. I loved it straight away. It’s mysterious, unique,” she tells me. It also pleases her that it was the fi rst fragrance created by a female couturier, “an avant-garde woman who was ahead of her time”. The day before, under conditions of total secrecy, I had been shown the campaign at Chanel’s London HQ. Shot by the Swedish director Johan Renck, the fi lm has a dream-like romance that is in marked contrast to the gritty realism of his most recent hit, Chernobyl. On a snowy night in a deserted Paris, a lone woman, clad in sober black and white, leans on a bridge and gazes up at the full moon. Suddenly, she fi nds herself transported to its cratered surface and, now wearing an elegant golden evening gown – created by Virginie Viard and inspired by one worn by Chanel herself – dances wildly, yet in perfect synchronicity, with a handsome stranger. The fi nal scene sees her restored to the Pont Louis- Philippe, her dance partner smiling by her side. Cotillard also performs the theme, Lorde’s song Team (on top of her acting talents, she is an accomplished musician and singer). “When we had the creative talk about what we would do, we thought we wanted something simple and radical, that this woman would be free and joyful,” Cotillard explains. Unlike her approach to feature fi lms, she was keen for the character to refl ect her own personality. “This woman is partly me – a free spirit.” Her love of adventure may be attested by the fact that, mere weeks after being fi lmed fl ying to the moon, Cotillard set off on a very different, and rather more personally arduous, voyage to the Antarctic as a Greenpeace Ocean Ambassador, in order to highlight the impact of climate change, pollution and industrial fi shing on marine life and penguin populations. “It’s defi nitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in my life,” she says softly. “It’s almost untouched; its energy is really fed by the fact that you can’t buy anything, you can’t sell anything…” arilyn Monroe wore it in bed; Andy Warhol immortalised it in a series of silk-screen prints; and 100 years after its invention, it remains a bestseller. Chanel No 5 is, without question, the most famous fragrance in the world; HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8702/11/2020 01:42:32 PM The FASHION 88 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8802/11/2020 01:42:41 PM The FASHION Blouse, Dhs6,400, Chanel BEAUTY NOTE: Do as the French would, with a laissez-faire, barely-there base courtesy of Chanel Les Beiges Eau de Teint, plus a touch of Chanel Baume Essentiel to highlight 89 HarpersBazaarArabia.com November 2020 HBA_151_084to097_MarionCotillard_11398011.indd 8902/11/2020 01:42:50 PMNext >