Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born on August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France. She was the daughter of a homeless girl who bore the baby out of wedlock. Her mother died when “Coco” was six years old.
It did not take long till her father stopped taking care of her. Coco Chanel found herself lonely and a homeless orphan. As a result she decided to go to be with her aunt.
And there she started learning etiquette, which affected her behavior in general and taught her how to be a polite young lady with refined manners and good posture. She also started learning how to sew, instead of spending her time playing with dolls.
At age seventeen, Coco Chanel was sent to an orphanage after her aunt abandoned her. There, the nuns started encouraging her sewing hobby, ultimately finding her a job. But as she got bored, she decided to try a life full of excitement. She decided to go to the Moulin Rouge cabaret to be a singer. There she met a rich man by the name of Etienne Balsan, becoming one of his mistresses.
He decided to help her, providing her with the money to open a small store in Paris for clothing. And there her name started to shine in the fashion world. She soon started to make a name for herself, focusing on clothing and hats for those with luxury tastes. For this she was recognized and distinguished from other designers, choosing to use dark colors after taking the idea from men’s clothes and the clothing of the nuns she lived with.
Four years later, Coco Chanel’s work flourished in the fashion world. In 1920 she met a person by the name Arthur” Boy” Capel who worked in the perfume field, making perfume for a French company. She convinced him to give her the fragrance. And that’s how the perfume Chanel No.5 was born in 1924, making her name shine among the French upper class.
Her name became famous, became a revolution for elegance and the perfume world.
Coco Chanel continued to follow innovation and renewal until she died at the age of 88. She never married and did not have children, but she achieved great success.
Karl Lagerfeld joined the House of Chanel and is still today under its supervision. Chanel remains known as one of the most expensive fashion houses in the world. The courageous lady who started it is now in the Top 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. She remains famous into this century.
At first, people used to make fun of her because of the way she dressed, but she never gave up and was not bothered by their comments. This was one of the reasons for her success. She tried always to employ creativity and innovation in her products in a recognizable way. An example of this is the use of a chain on women’s handbags, making the handle more comfortable. She is the one who invented this detail.
She used to create things never heard of at that time, with these creations then becoming the standard.
In addition to that, she was receiving the hate arrows of her opponents but never cared about their opinions.
One of the revolutions in women’s world was the color crimson for lipstick, a color not in existence at the time. She also launched the open neck shirt, while the rest of the world used to close all the buttons of the shirt. She loved men’s clothes. Because of this, she designed a lot of women’s clothing with ideas borrowed from men’s fashions.
Her clothes were characterized by simplicity and she was affected by a large number of artists and designers, such as Stravinsky, Salvador Dali, Picasso and Ballet producer Sergei Diaghilev. She took ideas from them, but was also influenced by the environment, nature and roses.
In summary, she exploded the femininity of women with her designs, clothing and perfume, showing men elegance. She left behind her fingerprints with the whole world gathered around her name, Coco Chanel.
