COCO CHANEL.

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971)was a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. She was the only fashion designer to appear on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.Along with Paul Poiret, Chanel was credited with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing the acceptance of a sportive, casual chic as the feminine standard in the post-World War I era.

PERSONAL LIFE & EARLY CAREER.

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born to an unwed mother, Eugénie "Jeanne" Devolle, a laundrywoman, in "the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence" in Saumur, France. She was Devolle's second daughter. Her father, Albert Chanel, was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments, living a nomadic life, traveling to and from market towns, while the family resided in rundown lodgings. In 1884, he married Jeanne Devolle, persuaded to do so by her family who had "united, effectively, to pay Albert to marry her." At birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as "Chasnel". Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as "travelling".With both parents absent, the infant's last name was misspelled, probably due to a clerical error.

Later in life, Chanel fabricated her history, concocting elaborate fictions in order to obscure her humble origins. Of the various stories told about Coco Chanel, a great number were of her own invention. These legends were to prove the undoing of her earliest biographies. These were ghosted memoirs commissioned by Chanel herself, but never published, always aborted before fruition, as she realized that the facts exposed a personage less laudable than the mythic Chanel she had invented. Chanel would steadfastly claim that when her mother died, her father sailed for America to seek his fortune and she was sent to live with two cold-hearted sinister aunts. She even claimed to have been born in 1893 instead of 1883 and that her mother had died when Coco was two instead of twelve.
Having learned the art of sewing during her six years at Aubazine, Chanel was able to find employment as a seamstress. When not plying her needle, she sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. Chanel made her stage debut singing at a café-concert (a popular entertainment venue of the era) in a Moulins pavilion, "La Rotonde". She was among other girls dubbed poseuses, the performers who entertained the crowd between star turns. The money earned was what they managed to accumulate when the plate was passed among the audience in appreciation of their performance. It was at this time that Gabrielle acquired the name "Coco", possibly based on two popular songs with which she became identified, "Ko Ko Ri Ko", and "Qui qu'a vu Coco", or it was an allusion to the French word for kept woman, cocotte.As cafe entertainer, Chanel radiated a juvenile allure that tantalized the military habitués of the cabaret.The year 1906 found Chanel in the spa resort town of Vichy. Vichy boasted a profusion of concert halls, theatres and cafes where Chanel hoped to find success as a performer. Chanel's youth and physical charms impressed those for whom she auditioned, but her singing voice was marginal and she failed to find stage work. Obliged to find employment, she took work at the "Grande Grille", where as a donneuse d'eau she was one of the females whose job it was to dispense glasses of the purportedly curative mineral water for which Vichy was renowned.When the Vichy season ended, Chanel returned toMoulins, and her former haunt "La Rotonde". She now realized that a serious stage career was not in her future.

FIRST PATRONS.
It was at Moulins that Chanel met the young French ex-cavalry officer and the wealthy textile heir Étienne Balsan. At the age twenty-three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d'Alençon as his new favorite.For the next three years, she lived with him in his chateau Royallieu near Compiègne, an area known for its wooded equestrian paths and the hunting life.It was a life style of self-indulgence, Balsan's wealth and leisure allowing the cultivation of a social who reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites with all the implied accompanying decadence. Balsan lavished Chanel with the beauties of "the rich life"—diamonds, dresses, and pearls. 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 Julia-Berthe who had committed suicide, was actually Chanel's child by Balsan.

In 1908 Chanel began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel.In later years, Chanel reminisced of this time in her life: "two gentlemen were outbidding for my hot little body."Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed Chanel in an apartment in Paris.and financed Chanel's first shops. It is said that Capel's own sartorial style influenced the conception of the Chanel look. The bottle design for Chanel No. 5 had two probable origins, both attributable to the sophisticated design sensibilities of Capel. It is believed Chanel adapted the rectangular, beveled lines of the Charvet toiletry bottles he carried in his leather traveling caseor it was the design of the whiskey decanter Capel used and Chanel so admired that she wished to reproduce it in "exquisite, expensive, delicate glass".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 English aristocrat, Lady Diana Wyndham 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.She commissioned the placement of a roadside memorial at the site of the accident, which she visited in later years to lay flowers in remembrance.Twenty-five years after the event, Chanel then residing in Switzerland, confided to her friend Paul Morand: "His death was a terrible blow to me. In losing Capel, I lost everything. What followed was not a life of happiness, I have to say."

Chanel began designing hats while living with Balsan, initially as a diversion that evolved into a commercial enterprise. She became a licensed milliner (hat maker) in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 rue Cambon, Paris named Chanel Modes.As this location already housed an established clothing business, Chanel sold only her millinery creations at this address. Chanel's millinery career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat modelled her hats in the F Noziere's play Bel Ami in 1912. Subsequently, Dorziat modelled her hats again in Les Modes.

In 1913, Chanel opened a boutique in Deauville financed by Arthur Capel where she introduced deluxe casual clothes suitable for leisure and sport. The fashions were constructed from humble fabrics such as jersey and tricot, primarily used for men's underwear.The location was a prime one, in the center of town on a fashionable street. Here Chanel sold hats, jackets, sweaters, and the marinière, the sailor blouse. Chanel had the dedicated support of two family members. One was her sister, Antoinette. The other was Adrienne Chanel, a woman close to Chanel's own age, yet, remarkably her aunt; the child of a union her grandfather had had late in his life.Adrienne and Antoinette were recruited to model her designs; on a daily basis the two women paraded through the town and on its boardwalks, advertising the Chanel creations.In 1918, Chanel was able to acquire the entire building at 31 rue Cambon situated in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris. In 1921, she opened what may be considered an early incarnation of the fashion boutique, featuring clothing, hats, and accessories later expanded to offer jewelry and fragrance. By 1927, Chanel owned an expanse of five properties on the rue Cambon, encompassing buildings numbered 23 through 31.
In the spring of 1920 (approximately May), Chanel was introduced to the composer Igor Stravinsky by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes.During the summer, Chanel discovered that the Stravinsky family was seeking a place to live. She invited them to her new home, "Bel Respiro," in the Paris suburb of Garches until they could find a more suitable residence.They arrived at "Bel Respiro" during the second week of September and remained until May 1921.Chanel also guaranteed the new (1920) Ballets Russes production of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) against financial loss with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev, said to be 300,000 francs.
In 1922, at the Longchamps races, Théophile Bader, founder of the Paris Galeries Lafayette, introduced Chanel to businessman Pierre Wertheimer. Bader was interested in inaugurating the sale of the Chanel No. 5 fragrance in his department store.In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors of the eminent perfume and cosmetics 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. The Wertheimers would receive seventy percent of the profits, and Théophile Bader a twenty percent share. 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".
One of Chanel's longest and enduring associations was with Misia Sert, a notable member of the Parisian, bohemian elite and wife of Spanish painter José-Maria Sert. It is said that theirs was an immediate bond of like souls, and Misia was attracted to Chanel by "her genius, lethal wit, sarcasm and maniacal destructiveness, which intrigued and appalled everyone".Both women, convent bred, maintained a friendship of shared interests, confidences and drug use. By 1935, Chanel had become a habitual drug user, injecting herself with morphine on a daily basis until the end of her life.According to Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent, Luca Turin related an apocryphal story in circulation that Chanel was "called Coco because she threw the most fabulous cocaine parties in Paris".

WORLD WAR II.

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops, maintaining her apartment situated above the couture house at 31 Rue de Cambon. She claimed that it was not a time for fashion and 3,000 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 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 dislike of Jews, reportedly inculcated by her convent years and sharpened by her association with society elites, had solidified her beliefs. She shared with most of her circle the conviction that Jews 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. Her romantic liaison with Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a German officer who had been an operative in military intelligence since 1920, facilitated her arrangement to reside at the Ritz.

World War II, specifically the Nazi seizure of all Jewish owned property and business enterprises, provided Chanel with the opportunity to gain the full monetary fortune generated by Parfums Chanel and its most profitable product, Chanel No. 5. The directors of Parfums Chanel, the Wertheimers, were Jewish, and Chanel used her position as an "Aryan" to petition German officials to legalize her claim to sole ownership.

On 5 May 1941, she wrote to the government administrator charged with ruling on the disposition of Jewish financial assets. Her grounds for proprietary ownership were based on the claim that Parfums Chanel "is still the property of Jews" and had been legally "abandoned" by the owners.

"I have," she wrote, "an indisputable right of priority … the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business … are disproportionate … [and] you can help to repair in part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of these seventeen years."

Chanel was not aware that the Wertheimers, anticipating the forthcoming Nazi mandates against Jews had, in May 1940, legally turned control of Parfums Chanel over to a Christian, French businessman and industrialist Felix Amiot. At war's end, Amiot turned "Parfums Chanel" back into the hands of the Wertheimers.

During the period directly following the end of World War II, the business world watched with interest and some apprehension the ongoing legal wrestle for control of Parfums Chanel. Interested parties in the proceedings were cognizant that Chanel's Nazi affiliations during wartime, if made public knowledge, would seriously threaten the reputation and status of the Chanel brand. Forbes magazine summarized the dilemma faced by the Wertheimers: [it is Pierre Wertheimer's worry] how "a legal fight might illuminate Chanel's wartime activities and wreck her image—and his business."

Ultimately, the Wertheimers and Chanel came to a mutual accommodation, renegotiating the original 1924 contract. On 17 May 1947, Chanel received wartime profits from the sale of Chanel No. 5, in an amount equivalent to some nine million dollars in twenty-first century valuation. Further, her future share would be two percent of all Chanel No. 5 sales worldwide.

In 1943, Chanel traveled to Berlin with Dinklage to meet with SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to formulate strategy.In late 1943 or early 1944, Chanel and her SS master, Schellenberg, devised a plan to press England to end hostilities with Germany. When interrogated by British intelligence at war's end, Schellenberg maintained that Chanel was "a person who knew Churchill sufficiently to undertake political negotiations with him".For this mission, namedOperation Modellhut ("Model Hat"), they recruited Vera Bate Lombardi. Count Joseph von Ledebur-Wicheln, a Nazi agent who defected to the British Secret Service in 1944, recalled a meeting he had with Dinklage in early 1943. Dinklage proposed an inducement that would tantalize Chanel. He informed von Ledebur that Chanel's participation in the operation would be ensured if Lombardi was included: "The Abwehr had first to bring to France a young Italian woman [Lombardi] Coco Chanel was attached to because of her lesbian vices…"Unaware of the machinations of Schellenberg and her old friend Chanel, Lombardi played the part of their unwitting dupe, led to believe that the forthcoming journey to Spain would be a business trip exploring the possibilities of establishing the Chanel couture in Madrid. Lombardi's role was to act as intermediary, delivering a letter penned by Chanel to Winston Churchill, and forwarded to him via the British embassy in Madrid.Schellenberg's SS liaison officer, Captain Walter Kutchmann, acted as bagman, "told to deliver a large sum of money to Chanel in Madrid".Ultimately, the mission proved a failure. British intelligence files reveal that all collapsed, as Lombardi, on arrival, proceeded to denounce Chanel and others as Nazi spies.

In September 1944, Chanel was called in to be interrogated by the Free French Purge Committee, the épuration. The committee, which had no documented evidence of her collaboration activity, was obliged to release her. According to Chanel's grand-niece, Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie, when Chanel returned home she said, "Churchill had me freed".

A previously unpublished interview exists dating from September, 1944 when Malcolm Muggeridge, then an intelligence agent with the British MI6, interviewed Chanel after her appearance before the Free French investigators. Muggeridge pointedly questions Chanel about her allegiances and wartime activities. As to her feelings of being the subject of a recent investigation of collaborators, Chanel had this to say of her interrogators: "It is odd how my feelings have evolved. At first, their conduct incensed me. Now, I feel almost sorry for those ruffians. One should refrain from contempt for the baser specimens of humanity…"

The extent of Winston Churchill's intervention can only be speculated upon. It was feared that if Chanel were ever made to testify at trial, the pro-Nazi sympathies and activities of top-level British officials, members of the society elite and those of the royal family itself would be exposed. Some claim that Churchill instructed Duff Cooper, British ambassador to the French provisional government, to protect Chanel.

Finally induced to appear in Paris before investigators in 1949, Chanel left her retreat in Switzerland to confront testimony given against her at the war crime trial of Baron Louis de Vaufreland, a French traitor and highly placed German intelligence agent. Chanel denied all accusations brought against her. She offered the presiding judge, Leclercq, a character reference: "I could arrange for a declaration to come from Mr. Duff Cooper."
POST-WAR LIFE & CAREER.

In 1945, Chanel moved to Switzerland, eventually returning to Paris in 1954. In 1953 she sold her villa La Pausa on the French Riviera to Emery Reves. La Pausa has been partially replicated at the Dallas Museum of Art, and contains pieces of furniture original to the villa and houses the Reves collection of art.

Unlike the pre-war era, when women reigned as the premier couturiers, the success of Christian Dior's "New Look" in 1947 brought to prominence a cadre of male designers—Christian Dior,Cristóbal Balenciaga, Robert Piguet, Jacques Fath. Chanel was convinced that women would ultimately rebel against the aesthetic favored by the male couturiers, what she called "illogical" design—the "waist cinchers, padded bras, heavy skirts, and stiffened jackets". Now over seventy years old, after a fifteen-year absence, she felt the time was right for her to re-enter 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.Her new collection was not received well by Parisians who felt her reputation had been tainted by her wartime association with the Nazis. However, her return to couture was applauded by the British and Americans, who became her faithful customers.

CONTRIBUTION.
The Chanel Suit.

Her initial triumph was the innovative use of jersey fabric, a machine knit material manufactured for her by the firm Rodier, and traditionally relegated to the manufacture of undergarments. Her wool jersey traveling suit consisted of a cardigan jacket, and pleated skirt, paired with a low-belted pullover top. This ensemble, worn with low-heeled shoes, became the casual look in expensive women's wear.

The "Little Black Dress".
The concept of the "little black dress" is often cited as a Chanel contribution to the fashion lexicon and as an article of clothing survives to this day. Its first incarnation was executed in thin silk, crèpe de chine, and had long sleeves.In 1926, the American edition of Vogue highlighted such a Chanel dress, dubbing it the garçonne (little boy look).Vogue editors predicted it would "become sort of a uniform for all women of taste", embodying a standardized aesthetic, which the magazine likened to the democratic appeal of the ubiquitous black Ford automobile. This look, a spare sheath, generated widespread criticism from male journalists who complained: "no more bosom, no more stomach, no more rump…Feminine fashion of this moment in the 20th century will be baptized lop off everything."

The Chanel Bag.

Identifying a need to liberate women's hands from the encumbrance of a hand held bag, Chanel conceived of a handbag that would accomplish this stylishly. Christened the "2.55" (named after the date of the bag's creation: February 1955), its design, as with much of her creative inspiration, was informed by her convent days and her love of the sporting world.

The original version was constructed of jersey or leather, the outside featuring a hand-stitched quilted design influenced by the jackets worn by jockeys. The chain strap was a nod to her orphanage years, reminiscent to Chanel of the abbey caretakers who wore such waist chains to hold keys. The burgundy red uniform worn by the convent girls was transmuted into the bag's interior lining.

The bag design went through a reincarnation in the 1980s when it was updated by Karl Lagerfeld. Known as the Reissue, the bag retained its original classic shape, with the clasp and chain strap differing from its initial form. Lagerfeld worked the House of Chanel logo, "CC" into the rectangular twist lock and wove leather through the shoulder chain.

Jewelery.

In 1933, designer Paul Iribe collaborated with Chanel in the creation of extravagant jewelry pieces commissioned by the International Guild of Diamond Merchants. The collection, executed exclusively in diamonds and platinum, was exhibited for public viewing and drew a large audience; some three thousand attendees were recorded in a one-month period.

As an antidote for vrais bijoux en toc, the obsession with costly, fine jewels, Chanel turned unenviable costume jewelry into a coveted accessory—especially when worn in excess displays, as did Chanel herself. Originally inspired by the opulent, costly jewels and pearls gifted to her by her aristocratic lovers, Chanel raided her own jewel vault and partnered with Duke Fulco di Verdura to launch a House of Chanel jewelry line. A white enameled cuff featuring a jeweled Maltese cross was Chanel's personal favorite and has become an iconic piece representative of the Verdura Chanel collaboration.The fashionable and wealthy loved the creations and made it wildly successful. Ever the oracle for the modern, society elite, Chanel put forth her own disingenuous PR statement delivered in the inevitable dictatorial manner: "It's disgusting to walk around with millions around the neck because one happens to be rich. I only like fake jewelry … because it's provocative."

Death.

As 1971 began, Chanel was 87 years old, tired, and ailing, but nonetheless stuck to her usual routine of preparing the spring catalog. She had gone for a long drive that afternoon and feeling ill, went to bed early where she died on Sunday, January 10, 1971 at the Hotel Ritz where she had resided for more than 30 years.Her grave is located in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne, Switzerland.
The "Present" Chanel.
Chanel keeps being a famous brand and it's clothing, accesorizing and perfums are still in fashion.Karl Lagerfeld is the main designer and the legacy of Chanel is keep on rising because of him.In one word, Chanel is always in style.