Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel 19 August 1883 160 10 January 1971 1 was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of the famous fashion brand Chanel. Her extraordinary influence on fashion was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on Time 100 The Most Important People of the Century.

Chanel was born on 19 August 1883 in the small town of Saumur in France. She was the second daughter of Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, a market stallholder and laundrywoman respectively at the time of her birth 3 . Her birth was declared the following day by employees of the hospital in which she was born. They, being illiterate, could not provide or confirm the correct spelling of the surname and it was recorded by the mayor Fran ois Poitou as "Chasnel". 4 This misspelling made the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence. Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings two sisters, Julie 1882 1913 and Antoinette born 1887 and three brothers, Alphonse born 1885 , Lucien born 1889 and Augustin born and died 1891 . In 1895, when she was 12 160 years old, Chanel's mother died of tuberculosis and her father left the family. Because of this, the young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of the Roman Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate. When Coco turned eighteen, she left the orphanage, and the ambitious young girl took off for the town of Moulins to become a cabaret singer. During this time, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called Coco. Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a shortened version of cocotte, the French word for kept woman, according to an article in The Atlantic.

While she failed to get steady work as a singer, it was at Moulins that she met rich, young French textile heir tienne Balsan, to whom she soon became an acknowledged mistress, keeping her day job in a tailoring shop. Balsan lavished on her the beauties of "the rich life" diamonds, dresses and pearls. Note that in France, mistresses have been acknowledged for centuries among the wealthy, though the members of the occupation, such as Chanel, were disparaged in private as upper-class prostitutes. While living with Balsan, Chanel began designing hats as a hobby, which soon became a deeper interest of hers. "After opening her eyes," as she would say, Coco left Balsan and took over his apartment in Paris.

In 1909 Chanel met and began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel.

Capel financed Chanel's first shops and his own clothing style, notably his jersey blazers, inspired her creation of the Chanel look. 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 aristocratic English beauty in 1918, he did not completely break off with Chanel. His death in an auto accident, in late 1919, was the single most devastating event in Chanel's life.