Early Life

Famed fashion designer Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19, 1883, in Saumur, France. With her trademark suits and little black dresses, Coco Chanel created timeless designs that are still popular today. She herself became a much revered style icon known for her simple yet sophisticated outfits paired with great accessories, such as several strands of pearls. As Chanel once said,luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury. Her early years, however, were anything but glamorous. After her mothers death, Chanel was put in an orphanage by her father who worked as a peddler. She was raised by nuns who taught her how to sewa skill that would lead to her lifes work. Her nickname came from another occupation entirely. During her brief career as a singer, 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.

Fashion Pioneer
Around the age of 20, Chanel became involved with Etienne Balsan who offered to help her start a millinery business in Paris. She soon left him for one of his even wealthier friends, Arthur Boy Capel. Both men were instrumental in Chanels first fashion venture. Opening her first shop on Pariss Rue Cambon in 1910, Chanel started out selling hats. She later added stores in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. Her first taste of clothing success came from a dress she fashioned out of an old jersey on a chilly day. In response to the many people who asked about where she got the dress, she offered to make one for them. My fortune is built on that old jersey that Id put on because it was cold in Deauville, she once told author Paul Morand. In the 1920s, Chanel took her thriving business to new heights. She launched her first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which was the first to feature a designers name. Perfume is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion. . . . that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure, Chanel once explained. In 1925, she introduced the now legendary Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. Her designs were revolutionary for the timeborrowing elements of mens wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say goodbye to the days of corsets and other confining garments. Another 1920s revolutionary design was Chanels little black dress. 1. She made the tan popular after retuning from a cruise to Cannes with a sunburn. 2. She was a Leo and collected anything with lions. 3. The shape of the Chanel No.5 bottle was in reference to Place Vendome. 4. She would have Chanel No. 5 sprayed throughout her home. 5. When Coco passed away, only 3 outfits were found in her Rue Cambon apartment. 6. In 1938, she started dating a Nazi officer named Hans Gunther Von Dincklage. 7. Until her death in 1971, her

fashion empire brought in more than $160 million per year. 8. Before her designing career began, she worked in a small hosiery shop in France. 9.The Duke of Westminster painted CC and part of his crest in gold on all the lamposts in W1, London. 10. Cocos real first name Gabriel. She got Coco from a song she performed in a musical called Qui qua vu Coco. 11. She loved pockets, most all her collections included pockets of some sort. Read more about 11 Fascinating Facts about Coco Chanel | Teacups & Couture on: http://teacupsandcouture.com/?p=1617&utm_source=INK&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign =share& t is thanks to the rich and constant dialogue with her artist, poet, writer and musician friends that Gabrielle Chanel was able to become a legend in her own right. Just like several of her friends, including Pablo Picasso, Mademoiselle Chanel invented a language that would very soon become that of modernity. While Picasso, with Cubism deconstructed the pictorial space inherited from the Renaissance, Chanel redesigned the female silhouette and freed the body from all constraints, liberating movement, defining the line, creating an allure.

Guillaume Apollinaire Calligramme to Pablo Picasso Calligram to Pablo Picasso SIC review, No. 17 May 1917 28.5 x 22 cm Periodical Bibliothque nationale de France, Paris (France) Bibliothque nationale de France/Courtesy of Gilbert Boudar DETAILS

Lon Bakst Femme au chapeau (Lady with a hat) Femme au chapeau 1916 Drawing 15 x 10.2 cm Bibliothque-muse de lOpra, Paris (France) Bibliothque nationale de France DETAILS

1910, Gabrielle Chanel opened her first hat shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris. Her simple and elegant wide-brimed hats contrasted with the complicated structures of her competitors. When in 1915 Guillaume Apollinaire dedicated the calligram poem "Reconnais-toi" to Louise de Coligny-

Chtillon, it represented the woman he was enamoured with, and who was one of his muses, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. It is worth nothing that the invention of the calligram is a movement towards abstraction: with the letters of the alphabet, Apollinaire drew the calligram featuring what the outspread words were referring to. Was it a sign of the times that only a few years later Gabrielle Chanel would call her first perfume N5, replacing the name by a number?

Anonymous Picasso and Olga in the London Studio Picasso and his wife Olga 1919 Duplicate Muse Picasso, Paris (France) RMN-Grand Palais All rights reserved DETAILS

Amedeo Modigliani Portrait de femme au grand chapeau (Portrait of a woman with a large hat) Portrait de femme au grand chapeau Signed dedication to the painter Ortiz de Zarate (friend of Amedeo Modigliani) 1916 Pastel on paper 21 x 12.7 cm Courtesy of Vered Gallery, New York (USA) Vered gallery East Hompton, New York DETAILS Anonymous Gabrielle Chanel, alone, on the beach at the Lido Gabrielle Chanel on the beach at the Lido 1920s Original photographic print 8,9 x 8,9 cm Private collection, Paris (France) Private collection/All rights reserved DETAILS Guillaume Apollinaire

Reconnais-toi (Recognise Yourself) Reconnais-toi Poem addressed to Louise de Coligny-Chtillon 9th February 1915 Facsimile 21.5 x 14.5 cm Bibliothque historique de la Ville de Paris, Paris (France) BHVP/Roger Viollet DETAILS On 18 May 1917, the Parade ballet premiered at the Thtre du Chtelet in Paris. This one-act ballet whose musical score was composed by Erik Satie surprised the public with its deliberately avant-garde tone. Serge Diaghilev who founded and directed the famous Ballets Russes asked the dancer Lonide Massine to choreograph the ballet and Jean Cocteau to pen the libretto, who was given carte blanche to decide who would work with him. Cocteau chose Erik Satie to be in charge of music and Picasso to be in charge of the stage curtain, sets and costumes. In the preface of the programme, Guillaume Apollinaire mentioned the alliance between painting and dance, between plastic art and body expression which is a sign of the advent of a more comprehensive art.

Thtre du Chatelet, programme Les ballets russes Paris The Ballets Russes in Paris May 1917 Printed document 31.5 x 24.6 cm CHANEL Collection, Paris (France) Succession Picasso 2013 DETAILS

Francis Picabia Portrait de Jean Cocteau Portrait de Jean Cocteau 1921 Watercolour, pencil, ink on pasted paper on cardboard 26.8 x 20.7 cm Centre Pompidou, bequest of Docteur Robert Le Masle in 1974, Paris (France) Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Georges Meguerditchian ADAGP Paris, 2013/courtesy Comit Picabia DETAILS

Anonymous Picasso and Olga in front of the poster of the ballet Parade Picasso and Olga in front of the poster of the ballet Parade Duplicate 1919 Popperfoto Collection Popperfoto/Getty Images DETAILS

Close to avant-garde figures, Gabrielle Chanel frequented the main protagonists of the Dada movement in Paris, Tristan Tzara and Francis Picabia. Breaking with convention and blowing the minds of the petit bourgeois, Dada was a genuine laboratory from which new forms of poetic writing and fine arts would emerge and a precursor to Surrealism.