coco

Life

Chanel herself mentioned constantly improved versions of her childhood. However, it seems certain that she was born as the second illegitimate daughter to the traveling salesman Albert Chanel and his lover Jeanne Devolle in the small city of Saumur, France. Her parents married in 1884. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julia (born 1882) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born 1891), who died after a few months. On 16 February 1895, when Gabrielle was 11 years old, her mother died; her father abandoned them a short time later. The young Gabrielle spent 7 years in the orphanage of the Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. After affairs with generous wealthy men – a military officer and later an English industrialist – she was able to open a shop in Paris in 1910 selling ladies' hats, and within a year moved the business to the fashionable Rue Cambon. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.^[1]

In 1921 Chanel No. 5 perfume was introduced by Chanel. The perfume was the first to be sold worldwide, and its bottle's straight lines stood out from the other flamboyant perfume bottles of the time. The No. 5 in Chanel No. 5, is said to be Coco's lucky number. Pierre Wertheimer became her partner in the perfume business in 1924. Wertheimer owned 70% of the company; Coco Chanel received 10% and her friend Bader 20%. The Wertheimers continue to control the perfume company today.

The influential Chanel suit, launched in 1923, was an elegant suit comprising a knee-length skirt and trim, boxy jacket, traditionally made of woven wool with black trim and gold buttons and worn with large costume-pearl necklaces. Coco Chanel also popularized the little black dress, whose blank-slate versatility allowed it to be worn for day and evening, depending on how it was accessorized. Although unassuming black dresses existed before Chanel, the ones she designed were considered the haute couture standard. In 1923, she told Harper's Bazaar that "simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."

The nickname Coco was evidently acquired at La Rotonde, a cafe frequented by members of a French cavalry regiment and many of the artists who flocked to Paris' Montparnasse section at the turn of the 20th century. It was there that Chanel, then a cabaret singer, performed a song called "Qui qu'a vu Coco," and the name stuck. (Other sources state that her audiences cried "Coco" when they wanted an encore, while further sources state that the song was called "Ko Ko Ri Ko," French for "Cock-a-doodle-do.")

Chanel was set up in business by a paramour, Étienne Balsan, a French textile heir, and her romantic affairs with the artist Paul Iribe, the Duke of Westminster, Grand Duke Dmitri of Russia, and British sportsman Boy Capel all had a considerable influence on the stylistic evolution of her often male-inspired fashions. Coco Chanel was very well known for minimal accesories, but was often photographed wearing a white Camellia.

She never married. For more than 30 years, Gabrielle Chanel made the Hôtel Ritz in Paris her home, even during the Nazi occupation of Paris, during which time she was criticized for anti-semitism and homophobia, and for having an intimate affair with Hans Gunther von Dincklage, Nazi officer who arranged for her to stay in her favorite hotel, the Hôtel Ritz Paris. He later turned out to be an intelligence agent. She maintained an apartment above her Rue Cambon establishment and also owned Villa La Pausa in the town of Roquebrune on the French Riviera. However, she spent her latter years in Lausanne, Switzerland , she died in Paris and is buried there in a tomb surrounded by five stone lions.

Chanel has been portrayed on the Broadway stage by Katharine Hepburn in a musical by Andre Previn and Alan Jay Lerner, and on screen by the French actress Marie-France Pisier.

The House of Chanel in Paris, under Karl Lagerfeld, remains one of the top design houses today.

Quotes

• "Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman."
• "Fashion passes, style remains."
• "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road."
• "There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel." On commenting as to why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster
• "I am Coco Chanel."
• "I love myself."

Sources

• Official Site of Chanel
• Women's History from about.com

1. ^ Ingrid Sischy (1998-06-08). Coco Chanel: She was shrewd, chic and on the cutting edge. The clothes she created changed the way women looked and how they looked at themselves. TIME 100 - The Most Important People of the Century. TIME. Retrieved on 2006-09-29.