Coco Chanel: Fashion Manifesto

Gabrielle Chanel was born into poverty in the Loire Valley in central France in 1883. She grew up in an orphanage, where she was taught to sew, iron and embroider. As a young adult she worked as a shop assistant and a café singer, where she was called Coco by soldiers in the audience. There she met wealthy men, including an Englishman called Arthur Capel. Chanel made her own hats, and Capel helped her open a millinery in Paris.

what’s in a name

In 1913 Chanel opened her first boutique in the French seaside resort of Deauville. She sold hats and simple sportswear for women, such as jersey sweaters. This poor girl look attracted the attention of wealthy women who wanted relief from the corseted styles of the time. Chanel’s couture business expanded into textiles, jewellery and perfumes. By the late 1920s Chanel industries were worth millions, and employed more than two thousand people.

RADICAL SIMPLICITY

In the 1920s, Chanel introduced some of her most famous designs. Her chic little black dress was so affordable and easy-to-wear, that fashion magazine Vogue predicted it would be worn by women all around the world. Coco shocked society by introducing evening trousers for women, and wearing her own hair boyishly short; many women adopted this new garçon style.

NUMBER 5

One of Chanel’s most lucrative products was the perfume Chanel No. 5, created with Ernest Beaux in 1921. To produce more, she partnered with businessmen Théophile Bader of the Galeries Lafayette department store and Pierre Wertheimer of the Bourjois cosmetics company. This left Chanel earning just 10 per cent of the royalties.

WARTIME DRAMA

Chanel closed her couture house in 1939 with the outbreak of World War Two. During the early 1940s, she had a relationship with Nazi officer Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, who helped free her nephew, André Palasse, from a German prisoner-of-war camp. Her associations with the Nazis tainted her reputation, although more recent evidence has revealed that Chanel was also a documented member of the French Resistance.

LATER YEARS

Chanel finally reopened her fashion house in 1954. She told the actor Marlene Dietrich that it was because she was “dying of boredom.” That year she introduced her iconic suit design: a collarless, braid-trimmed cardigan jacket with a skirt. She also introduced bell-bottomed trousers. Chanel worked well into her 80s. She never married, and had no children. She died in her room at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in 1971.