Coco Chanel

Chanel. Fashion, French, Beauty, Life.

       Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel was born with the name Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19th 1883 in Saumur France. She had five siblings, two sisters and three brothers. When Coco was at age twelve, her mother died and the childrens' father left the family. Because of this, the young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of Roman Catholic monastery of Aubazine. There, she learned seamstress. School Vacations were spent with provincial relatives, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than what the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate.

     

     When Coco was eighteen, she left the orphanage and went to the town of Moulins to become a caberat singer. During that time, she performed in clubs Vichy and Moulins, where she was called 'Coco'. Chanel said that the name 'Coco' was shortend from the word cocotte, which in french means 'kept woman'.

       While Coco failed to get a steady work as a singer, it was at Moulins where she met rich, young French textile heir Étienne Balsan, to which she soon became and acknoledged mistress, keeping her day job in a tailoring shop. Balsan lavished on her beauties of "the rich life": diamonds, dresses and pearls. While living with Balsan, she began desighning hats as a hobby, which soon became a greater interest of hers. "After opening her eyes," she would say, Coco left Balsan and took over his apartment in Paris.

         In 1909, she fell in love with Captain Arthur Edward Capel. Capel financed Chanel's first shops and his own clothing style. Chanel became a licensed modiste in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 rue Cambon, Paris named 'Chanel Modes'. Chanel's modiste career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat modelled her hats in the F Noziere's play Bel Ami in 1912 (Dorziat modelled Chanel's hats again in Les Modes). In 1913, Chanel established a boutique in Deauville, where she introduced casual clothes that were suitable for leisure and sport.

        Chanel launched her career as a fashion desighner when she opened her next boutique titled Chanel Biarritz, in 1915, catering for the wealthy Spanish clientele. Fashionable like Deauville, Chanel created loose casual clothes made of jersey.

       Chanel and Capel lasted nine years. But Capel married an English beauty in 1918. Although he married, he did not completely break off with Chanel.  His death in an auto accident in late 1919, was the most devasting event in Chanel's life.

      By 1919, Chanel was registered as a couturiere and established her maison de couture at 31 rue Cambon. In 1920, she was introduced by ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev to world famous composer Igor Stravinsky, to whom she extended an offer for him and his family to reside with her.

In 1945 she moved to Switzerland, eventually returning to Paris in 1954, the same year she returned to the fashion world.

           Coco Chanel died on January 10th 1971 in Paris. Although Chanel passed away, her fashion line runs on to this day.