Feeneesh?

For over a decade her name has been little more than a memory borne on the elusive scent of a perfume now made by someone else. Yet, during the 1920s, when Paris was still the uncontested capital of haute couture, the unchallenged queen regnant of Paris fashion was petite, disdainful Gabrielle ("Coco") Chanel. A bored, restless, country-bred orphan who fled to the city at 17 with no capital beyond her native Auvergnate shrewdness, Chanel had parlayed a flair for simple elegance into a million-dollar fashion business whose headquarters was the distinctive salon at 31 Rue Cambon, Paris.

One of Chanel's first acts as a fashion arbiter was to tear down the monstrous constructions of net and feathers that crowned women's heads and set in their place simple hats. From this radical start, she went on to order the fashionable women of three continents into the turtleneck sweaters of the apaches, to expose their knees and suppress their curves. The New Look of the '20s was the look of Coco Chanel; from it and the sale of dresses, hats, perfumes, handbags, junk jewelry and almost anything else that fashionable women chose to buy, Coco herself became one of France's richest women.

Tragedy struck--in the form of Elsa Schiaparelli. The struggle lasted ten years. In 1938, almost overnight, the women of Paris, followed sheeplike by the women of the world, turned from Coco to the invader from Italy, with her exaggerated feminine conceits, her tassels, her flaming colors and "parachute" silhouettes. "Chanel wanted the tricot sailor frock with the long sweater, the short skirt," says Schiaparelli. "I took the frock. I altered the line . . . Voil`a! Chanel ees feeneesh!"

Solvent but disillusioned, Chanel quit. But was she finished? Last week all fashion-conscious Paris was asking this question as it trooped once again to Rue Cambon for 71-year-old Coco Chanel's first fashion show in 15 years. There was more than a show of feline claws as the fat cats of the fashion world crowded in among the models like subway riders in a rush hour. Some fashion writers found Coco's long-skirted, severely tailored designs "tacky." A plain navy suit was modeled, wrote one, "by a brunette mannequin who was with Chanel 20 years ago. In the respectful silence you could almost hear the jaws dropping." The writer for Le Figaro observed: "It was touching; one might have thought oneself back in 1925." But in the midst of all the scratching and meowing, one U.S. fashion expert detected a careful hedge: "The buyers are buying."

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