140 years ago, a French woman was born whose biography her compatriots would call Art de Vivre – “The Art of Living.” She was a mistress, a collaborator, and an exile, never married, returned to business at 71, and conquered the fashion world once again, passing away at 87 in a hotel room with $15 million in her account. The success story of the founder of the House of Chanel and a revolutionary in women’s fashion was shaped by a negative experience of poverty, respect for money, a thirst for development, an independent spirit, personal determination, and a love for life.
Wallets Without Coin Compartments
On her journey to becoming equal to the aristocrats, Gabrielle Bonheur (Coco) Chanel offered a “luxurious simplicity” as a substitute for the trappings of wealth. More fitting for the dynamic century, the aesthetic of le luxe de la simplicité became part of women’s liberation. By freeing fashionistas from uncomfortable corsets, high heels, handheld reticules, and expensive jewelry, the innovator proposed practical alternatives like women’s trousers, tank tops, the universally adored “little black dress,” pencil skirts, jockey hats, ballet flats, chain or strap handbags, affordable costume jewelry, and her legendary perfumes.
Coco Chanel’s dresses on display at the FIDM Museum & Galleries on the Park in Los Angeles, 2009.
The resourceful designer found new uses for austere items from the men’s wardrobe… in the closets of her benefactors. As Coco Chanel once said, every man taught her something and gave her something. And she only associated with those who had “wallets without coin compartments.”
The name of the creator of the renowned personal brand is inseparable from the French capital: the fashion residence on Rue Cambon, where Coco Chanel moved just before the 1920s, still belongs to the House of Chanel she founded, even a century later. But before reaching Paris, the daughter of a laundress and a seller of work uniforms and underwear had a journey ahead, as the future fashion icon was born on August 19, 1883, in the provincial town of Saumur – in the very charitable hospital for the impoverished where her destitute mother washed dirty sheets.
Her father frequently moved around for his market trading, so he was listed as a “traveler” on his daughter’s birth certificate. Due to a mistake in the family name, the newborn girl was recorded as Chasnel, which later allowed Coco Chanel to claim a different city as her birthplace. For a rootless provincial girl who repeatedly adjusted her own biography, it was important to hide the fact that she was born in a poorhouse. But she could not escape her fate, ending up in another orphanage after her mother’s death.
The sign of Coco Chanel’s first boutique
Choosing a Path
Jeanne Devol and Albert Chanel had six children, one after another. Gabrielle was the second, and the age gap between her older sisters was less than a year. The large family squeezed into a one-room dwelling in New Aquitaine (in the south of France). One of her brothers died in childhood. After the death of their 32-year-old mother during another childbirth, their father placed the children in “good hands”: he sent two sons to work in the village and confined three daughters to an orphanage at the abbey.
Gabrielle was around 11 or 12 years old at the time, although she often downplayed her age of orphanhood, just as she periodically reduced her actual age by ten years. During her six years in the orphanage, the diligent girl learned to sew, which would later support her future endeavors. It was no coincidence that the logo of her fashion house would become a geometric depiction of the chapel at the Abazinsky Monastery: this symbol of protection for the underprivileged was proposed by Gabrielle herself.
While later attending a Catholic girls’ boarding school in Moulins, 18-year-old Chanel found work at a local haberdashery. During the day, she sewed and sold clothes, and in the evenings, she entertained guests at a café-chantey. At the La Rotonde pavilion, Gabrielle was hired as a poseuse – a performer who filled the pauses between artists’ acts.
Chanel clothing, 1917.
It was during the songs “Ko Ko Ri Ko” and “Qui qu’a vu Coco” that Chanel earned her nickname Coco. Although it was associated with the word cocotte, meaning “little hen” in French, the girl made it her new name. However, it never appeared on posters: that experience did not lead to a professional singing career. Instead, it became a stepping stone into the life of a mistress. In the cabaret, Chanel seized the opportunity to find a personal sponsor (men would play a key role in solving her problems and financing her projects).
Hot Body
The first patron of the 23-year-old slender beauty, who weighed 121 pounds at a height of 5’6″, was Étienne Balsan, a hereditary owner of a textile factory and elite stables, a former cavalry officer. His new mistress “pushed aside” the previous favorite, left her job, and settled in the wealthy man’s castle, where she spent three years in pleasures and delights.
It is known that Chanel had abortions and remained childless, but one of her biographers, Justine Picardie, recently shocked the world with a sensational suggestion that André Palas, her nephew, might actually have been Coco’s son with Balsan.
The lover introduced Chanel to his industrialist friend, Arthur Capel, who became her next patron starting in 1908. Chanel recalled this stage of her life: “Two gentlemen tried to outdo each other in competing for my hot body.”
Captain Capel was a representative of the English elite, and his investments paved the way for his friend into the fashion world. Thanks to her wealthy lover, the licensed milliner moved to a Paris apartment and debuted in 1910 as a designer, opening her first hat boutique in Paris.
Arthur “showed off” Coco at fashionable resorts and paid her bills, but one could not expect fidelity from a mistress: Capel always had a reputation as a womanizer. Rumor has it that Chanel even made a dress for his fiancée – an English aristocrat he married in 1918. Just a year later, the former fiancée became a young widow: Capel died in a car accident. The unexpected loss of her friend was a great shock for Chanel, as she had to seek means of survival once again. Perhaps it was then that her famous aphorism was born: “A married woman stops worrying about the future, while a married man starts.”
A year later, an émigré prince, Dmitri Romanov, entered Chanel’s life. The cousin of Emperor Nicholas II was 30 years old, while Coco was already 37. The brief romance (the aristocrat left for America and married there a year later) was also used by Chanel to develop her business. The prince introduced her to perfumer Ernest Beaux, who created the original scent of Chanel No. 5 (of the ten fragrance options presented, Chanel chose the fifth sample, hence the extravagant name of the perfume).
Gabrielle Chanel, 1928.
Agent Westminster
The next stage was her relationship with the twice-divorced Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor. This connection lasted at least ten years (possibly even fourteen), beginning with their meeting in Monte Carlo in 1925. The duke gifted Chanel a luxurious mansion in London and a plot of land on the Côte d’Azur, where the designer built the villa La Pausa.
Chanel and the Duke of Westminster, 1920s.
One of her subsequent romances could have cost Chanel her life’s work, as it became the reason for accusations of aiding the enemy. In an attempt to rescue her nephew André Palas from German captivity in 1940, Chanel sought help from an old acquaintance – Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage. The prisoner was released at the cost of a love affair between the 56-year-old Chanel and the 44-year-old attaché of the German embassy. Thus began her collaboration with the German government: whether knowingly or unknowingly, the French mistress of a Wehrmacht colonel became his informant.
According to various reports, Chanel traveled to Berlin for a personal meeting with the head of German foreign intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, and her British contacts (including her acquaintance with Winston Churchill from the 1920s) were sought by the Abwehr to organize bilateral secret negotiations: in declassified documents, Chanel is referred to as “Agent Westminster.”
Coco and Winston Churchill
And although Coco denied her involvement in the alleged espionage missions, her obvious connection with the fascists was viewed by the French authorities as collaborationism, and the accused could not avoid arrest. However, the intricacies of international politics freed Chanel from responsibility: in 1944, she was given the opportunity to move from France to neutral Switzerland, where she lived with her German lover on the shores of Lake Geneva until 1953.
Nothing More to Add
The “orphan from the poorhouse” managed to arrange her life so that she would never have to suffer again. Closing all her stores during the war, she ensured that she continued to profit from the business that remained afloat. During the occupation of France, the founder of the fashion house took advantage of anti-Jewish laws to seize control of the shares from the Wertheimer brothers. They had owned the production of her perfumes since 1924 when Pierre Wertheimer founded the company Les Parfums Chanel.
However, the business-savvy mademoiselle was unsuccessful: the shrewd entrepreneurs emigrated to the USA, formally transferring the factory to a French friend, whom the law could not touch. After the war, the paths of the former partners crossed again. The 71-year-old Coco Chanel returned to the fashion world in 1954 with a new collection, financed by the Wertheimers, and after her death, this family became the sole owners of the successful brand (today it is owned by brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer).
The famous Chanel No. 5 perfume
Until the end of her life, the couturier, who outlived all her lovers, worked on new collections, smoking 50 cigarettes a day. She had principles that prevented her from accepting the new trend of mini skirts. “Chanel’s style” forever remained a status symbol. Its well-known advocates in the 1950s and 60s included “the epitome of elegance” Jacqueline Kennedy, and Hollywood stars Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor.
Coco financially supported people to whom she felt indebted, investing in artists and painters. Among those she sponsored were Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. The latter called Chanel “the most prudent woman” of all those he knew.
Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso
“I would never have become famous without men,” Coco Chanel reflected. “But I don’t know if I was happy…”
Coco Chanel passed away at the age of 88 on January 10, 1971, in a luxury suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The designer’s boutique was just a few steps away from the room where she lived for 34 years. However, Mademoiselle Chanel was laid to rest in Lausanne, Switzerland: there, the renowned Frenchwoman, who was named by The Times as one of the hundred most influential people of the 20th century, spent a quarter of her life. On her tombstone, featuring a relief of five lion heads alongside her dates of life, are inscribed only two words: “Gabrielle Chanel, 1883–1971.”
Coco Chanel, 1960s.
