Coco Chanel

There has never been a fashion designer more famous, notorious, influential or enigmatic. She made the incredible journey from orphanage to chateau, from cabaret singer to friend and lover of dukes, princes and prime ministers.

To say she came from humble beginnings is an understatement: born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel in 1883, she was the illegitimate daughter of a washerwoman mother and an itinerant street peddlar father. When her mother died of consumption when Gabrielle was 12 years old, she was sent – with her two sisters – to an orphanage run by nuns. It was here among the strict discipline and harsh life of the convent that the young girl learnt to sew.

At 18 she moved to a boarding house in the town of Moulins and found work as a seamstress. She supplemented her meagre earnings by singing in the local cabaret where she earned her nickname “Coco”. The name came either from one of the popular songs she performed – Ko Ko Ri Ko – or from the abbreviation of cocotte, the French word for mistress. (Later in her life there was even an apocryphal story that the nickname came about because she threw the best cocaine parties in Paris.)

While singing in Moulins she met socialite and wealthy textile heir Etienne Balsan, and at 23 she became his mistress, moving in to Balsan’s opulent chateau in northern France. For the next three years she lived the life of the idle rich, designing hats as a hobby. She began an affair with Arthur Edward “Boy” Capel, one of Etienne’s wealthy friends, who subsequently moved Chanel into an apartment in Paris.

Coco became a licensed milliner and in 1910 opened a shop, Modes Chanel, on rue Cambon in Paris to display and sell her hats. Three years later she opened a boutique – financed by Capel – in the centre of Deauville, a seaside town fashionable with the French upper class. As well as hats, the shop sold the classic striped sailor sweater (mariniere) and practical, casual clothes made from jersey, a humble material normally associated with men’s underwear. Chosen by Chanel because of its low cost, the fabric was a highly unusual but inspired choice and she quickly built up a loyal clientele. Women were still used to wearing corsets, and Chanel’s simple styles, softer fabrics and shorter skirts made women feel liberated.

In 1915 Chanel opened a boutique in a villa in Biarritz, a haven for wealthy people dispossessed by World War I. The business was so successful that the ambitious 32-year-old was able to pay Capel back his entire original investment after just one year, and by the end of the war she had bought the building on rue Cambon in which Modes Chanel was housed. Here, in 1921, she opened a store that was to become the blueprint for the modern fashion brand: clothing, accessories, jewellery and perfume. Chanel No. 5 was launched the same year: it was an instant success and was followed in 1924 by the label’s first line of make-up.

Throughout the ‘20s Chanel continued to push the boundaries of women’s fashion.  She discovered tweed on one of her many trips to Scotland with the Duke of Westminster and began using the fabric in her suits. In 1926 she introduced the little black dress, which was seen as such a basic necessity that American Vogue likened it to a Ford.