Coco

Chanel
Students:Baicu Nadia & Toader
Cornelia

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 “A woman can be over-dressed, never over-elegant.”[6]

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971)was a

pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired
fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-
century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion
brands, Chanel. Her extraordinary influence on fashion was such that she was the only
person in the couturier field to be named on Time 100: The Most Important People
of the Century.
Clothes, for Coco Channel, were for freedom and forgetting. Women should be
able to walk, to drive, to ride their bicycles and to forget what they are wearing. She
replaced whalebone corsets and bird’s nest hats with loose trousers, Breton tops and
sailor blouses, clothes that “women can live in, breath in, feel comfortable in and look
young in”. The baroque evening gown was exchanged for that little black dress, worn
with a single string of pearls.
“Extravagant things didn’t suit me,” Chanel said, meaning that extravagant things
didn’t suit any woman. Black, however, “wipes out everything else around”. It is the
“absence of colors”, Chanel explained in one of her dazzling artistic statements, which
has “absolute beauty”.

“As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!”[6]
Early Life
Chanel was born in Saumur, France. She was the second daughter of Albert Chanel
and Jeanne Devolle, a market stallholder and laundrywoman. Her birth was declared
by employees of the hospital in which she was born. They, being illiterate, could not
provide or confirm the correct spelling of the surname and it was recorded by the
mayor François Poitou as "Chasnel".This misspelling made the tracing of her roots
almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence.
Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882–1913)
and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born
1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old,
Chanel's mother died of tuberculosis and her father left the family. Because of this, the
young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of the Roman Catholic monastery
of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent
with relatives in the provincial capital, where female relatives taught her to sew with
more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate.
When Coco turned eighteen, she was obliged to leave the orphanage, and affiliated
with the circus of Moulins as a cabaret singer. During this time, Chanel performed in
bars in Vichy and Moulins where she was called "Coco." Some say that the name
comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a
"shortened version of cocotte, the French word for 'kept woman'," according to an
article in The Atlantic. According to Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent, Luca

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Turin was told that Chanel was "called Coco because she threw the most fabulous
cocaine parties in Paris".
“Luxury is the opposite of vulgarity.”
Personal life and entry into fashion
While she failed to get steady work as a singer, it was at Moulins that she met rich,
young French textile heir Étienne Balsan, to whom she soon became an acknowledged
mistress, keeping her day job in a tailoring shop. Balsan lavished on her the beauties
of "the rich life": diamonds, dresses, and pearls. While living with Balsan, Chanel
began designing hats as a hobby, which soon became a deeper interest of hers. "After
opening her eyes," as she would say, Coco left Balsan and took over his apartment in
Paris. Biographer Justine Picardie, in her 2010 study Coco Chanel: The Legend and
the Life (Harper Collins), suggests that the fashion designer's nephew André Palasse—
supposedly the only child of her sister Julie—may actually have been Chanel's child
by Balsan.
In 1909 Chanel met and began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain
Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel. Capel financed Chanel's first shops and his own clothing
style, notably his jersey blazers, and inspired her creation of the Chanel look. The
couple spent time together at fashionable resorts such as Deauville, but he was never
faithful to Chanel. The affair lasted nine years, but even after Capel married an
aristocratic English beauty in 1918, he did not completely break off with Chanel. His
death in a car accident, in late 1919, was the single most devastating event in Chanel's
life. A roadside memorial at the site of the accident was placed there by Chanel, who
visited it in later years to place flowers there.
Chanel became a licensed modiste (hat maker) in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21
rue Cambon, Paris named Chanel Modes. Chanel's modiste career bloomed once
theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat modeled her hats in the F Noziere's play Bel Ami in
1912. In 1913, she established a boutique in Deauville, where she introduced luxe
casual clothes that were suitable for leisure and sport. Chanel launched her career as
fashion designer when she opened her next boutique, titled Chanel-Biarritz, in
1915, catering to the wealthy Spanish clientele who holidayed in Biarritz and were
less affected by the war.] Fashionable like Deauville, Chanel created loose casual
clothes made out of jersey, a material typically used for men's underwear. By 1919,
Chanel was registered as a couturiere and established her maison de couture at 31 rue
Cambon.
Later in life, she concocted an elaborate false history for her humble beginnings. Of
the various stories told about Coco Chanel – born Gabrielle, misidentified as Chasnel,
the illegitimate daughter of an itinerant market trader, in a provincial French
poorhouse in 1883 – a great number were invented by herself. These legends were to
be the undoing of the earliest of her biographies (ghosted memoirs commissioned by
Mademoiselle Chanel, but never completed or published, always smothered by her at
birth when she realized that the truth was less compelling, at least to her, than the self-

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invented creation myth). Chanel would steadfastly claim that when her mother died,
her father sailed for America to get rich and she was sent to live with two cold-hearted
spinster aunts. She even claimed to have been born in 1893 as opposed to 1883, and
that her mother had died when Coco was six instead of twelve.
In 1920, she was introduced by ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev to Igor
Stravinsky, composer of The Rite of Spring, to whom she extended an offer for him
and his family to reside with her.
In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul,
directors of the eminent perfume house Bourgeois since 1917, creating a corporate
entity, "Parfums Chanel." The Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for
production, marketing and distribution of Chanel No. 5. For ten percent of the stock,
Chanel licensed her name to "Parfums Chanel" and removed herself from involvement
in all business operations. Displeased with the arrangement, Chanel worked for more
than twenty years to gain full control of "Parfums Chanel." She proclaimed that Pierre
Wertheimer was “the bandit who screwed me.”
Coco dated some of the most influential men of her time, but she never married.
The reason may be found in her answer, when asked why she did not marry the Duke
of Westminster: "There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only
one Chanel."
In 1925, Vera Bate Lombardi, née Sarah Gertrude Arkwright, reputedly the
illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge, became Chanel's muse, and also
her liaison to a number of European royal families. Chanel established the English
look based upon Lombardi's personal style. Lombardi also had the highest possible
social connections. She introduced Chanel to her uncle, the Duke of Westminster, her
cousin, the Duke of Windsor, and many other aristocratic families. In 1927 she built
Villa La Pausa in Roquebrune on the French Riviera hiring the architect Robert
Streitz. The villa has a staircase and a patio inspired by her orphanage, Aubazine. La
Pausa has been partially replicated at the Dallas Museum of Art to welcome the Reves
collection and part of Chanel's original furniture for the house.
It was in 1931 while in Monte Carlo that Chanel made the acquaintance of Samuel
Goldwyn. The introduction was made through a mutual friend, the Grand Duke Dmitri
Pavlovich, cousin to the last czar of Russia, Nicolas II. Goldwyn offered Chanel a
tantalizing proposition. For the sum of a million dollars (approximately seventy-five
million today), he would bring her to Hollywood twice a year to design costumes for
MGM stars. Chanel accepted the offer. En route to California from New York traveling
in a white train car, which had been luxuriously outfitted specifically for her use, she
was interviewed by Colliers magazine in 1932. Chanel said she had agreed to the
arrangement to "see what the pictures have to offer me and what I have to offer the
pictures." This enterprise with the film industry left Chanel with a dislike for the
business of movie making and distaste for the Hollywood culture itself, which she
denounced as “infantile.” Ultimately, her design aesthetic did not translate well to

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film, failing to satisfy the standard of Hollywood glamour of the era. On screen her
creations did not transmit enough dazzle and sexy allure. Her designs for film stars
were not acclaimed and generated little comment.
“A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.”[6]
World War II
In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops. She claimed
that it was not a time for fashion. Three thousand female employees lost their
jobs. The advent of war had given Chanel the opportunity to retaliate against those
workers, who lobbying for fair wages and work hours, had closed down her business
operation during the general labor strike in France in 1936. In closing her couture
house, Chanel made a definitive statement of her political views. Her visceral loathing
of Jews inculcated by her convent years, and sharpened by her aristocratic associations
over time, had solidified her right-wing beliefs. She shared with most of her circle the
conviction that Jews and liberal politicians were a Bolshevik threat to Europe. During
the German occupation Chanel resided at the Hotel Ritz, which was also noteworthy
for being the preferred place of residence for upper echelon German military staff. She
also maintained an apartment above her couture house at 31 rue Cambon. Her
romantic liaison with a German officer who had been an operative in military
intelligence since 1920, facilitated her arrangement to reside at the Ritz. Archival
documents verify that Chanel herself was a Nazi spy, committing herself to the
German cause as early as 1941, when she became a paid agent of General Walter
Schellenberg, chief of SS intelligence. Her clandestine identity was Abwehr Agent
7124, code name “Westminster.”
The Wertheimers and Chanel came to a mutual accommodation, re-negotiating the
original 1924 contract, which referred to Chanel’s wartime profit. Eventually, she
received her part of money- nine million dollars from the sale of Chanel No. 5.
Further, her future share would be two percent of all Chanel No. 5 sales worldwide.
The financial benefit to her would be enormous. Her earnings would be in the vicinity
of twenty-five million dollars a year, making her at the time one of the richest women
in the world. Chanel’s friend and biographer Marcel Haedrich provided a telling
estimation of her wartime interaction with the Nazi regime: “If one took seriously the
few disclosures that Mademoiselle Chanel allowed herself to make about those black
years of the occupation, one’s teeth would be set on edge.”
In 1943, after four years of professional separation, Chanel contacted Lombardi,
who was living in Rome. She invited Lombardi to come to Paris and renew their work
together. This was actually a cover for "Operation Modellhut," an attempt
by Nazi spymaster Walter Schellenberg to make secret contact with Lombardi's
relative Winston Churchill. When Lombardi refused, she was arrested as a British spy
by the Gestapo. Chanel was later charged as a collaborator, but avoided trial due to
intervention by the British Royal family.

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 “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”[6]
Later years and death
In 1945, she moved to Switzerland, eventually returning to Paris in 1954, the same
year she returned to the fashion world. The re-establishment of her couture house in
1954 was fully financed by Chanel’s old nemesis in the perfume battle, Pierre
Wertheimer. This new contractual agreement would also allow Wertheimer to maintain
ownership of “Parfums Chanel.” In return, Wertheimer agreed to an unusual
arrangement proposed by Chanel herself, attempting to revive her youthful years as
the kept woman of wealthy men. Wertheimer would pay for all of Chanel’s expenses
from the large to the trivial for as long as she lived.
Her new collection was not received well by Parisians whose memory of Chanel's
treasonous collaboration with the Nazis still resonated in the public mind. However,
her return to couture was applauded by the British and Americans, who became her
faithful customers.
In early 1971 Chanel, then eighty-seven years old, was tired and ailing but
continued to adhere to her usual schedule, overseeing the preparation of the spring
collection. She died on Sunday 10 January, at a hotel where she had resided for more
than thirty years. She had gone for a long drive that afternoon and, not feeling well,
had retired early to bed.
“A woman has the age she deserves.”[6]

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 Depictions
 Film Depictions
The first film about Chanel was Chanel
Solitaire (1981).
The American television movie Coco Chanel debuted on 13 September 2008
on Lifetime Television, starring Shirley MacLaine as a 70-year-old Chanel. The movie
substantially rewrote Chanel's personal history, such as its portrayal of her status as a
professional mistress as instead a series of "love stories," and glossing over both her
Nazi collaboration and her use of British Royal connections to avoid post-war trial as
a collaborator.
A film starring Audrey Tautou as the young Coco, titled Coco avant
Chanel (Coco Before Chanel), was released on 22 April 2009. Audrey Tautou is the
new spokeswoman of Chanel S.A.
The film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, concerns the purported affair
between Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. The film is based on the 2002 novel Coco &
Igor by Chris Greenhalgh, and was chosen to close the Cannes Film Festival of 2009.

 Literary Depictions
Coco & Igor is a novel, written by Chris Greenhalgh, which depicts the affair
between Chanel and Igor Stravinsky and the creative achievements that this affair
inspired. The novel was first published in 2003.In 2008 a children's book
entitled Different like Coco was published. It depicted the humble childhood of Coco
Chanel and chronicled how she made drastic changes to the fashion industry.The
Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant
Woman is a novel written by Karen Karbo. Published in 2009, it chronicles the humble
beginnings and legendary achievements of Coco Chanel while providing insight and
advice on everything from embracing the moment to living life on your own terms.

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