The True Story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel: The Childhood That She Never Wanted You to Know

Just 60 kilometres to the south of Moulins on the D2009 highway is the celebrated spa town of Vichy, which hit the heights of popularity in the Belle Epoque period (1870-1914). In 1906, seeing herself as a stage performer now, Chanel tried her luck there in a town full of entertainment venues, but with no success, because only the best talents got work in Vichy and her voice was not great. To keep afloat she got a job serving water from the springs, handing cups of the mineral-rich liquid to cash-rich visitors.

A magnet for health seekers since Celtic and Roman times, Vichy took off as a tourism destination in the mid-19th century when France’s ruler, Emperor Napoleon III, became enamoured of its waters. The town developed in the next decades into a favourite of French high society and the wealthy bourgeoisie, filled with lavish hotels, spas and casinos.

An elegant town of 24,000 people these days, it offers several spas with revitalising waters, with the vast Hall of Springs at its heart featuring taps from six different sources. At Vichy, the River Allier has been widened to a lake offering water sports, flanked by a flower-decked promenade. The main shopping street is lined with designer boutiques, including Chanel of course, and for those who want to chance their luck at the tables, a solitary casino still beckons.

And in the casino of life, Chanel finally got lucky. Returning to Moulins, the young woman met Etienne Balsan, a dashing—and rich—cavalry officer and racehorse owner who took her off to his chateau at Compiegne north of Paris, where the next phase of her life began. In her biography, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, Justine Picardie puts it this way: “And so Coco went with him there, leaving Gabrielle behind her, locked away in a shadowy place where no one might find her, nor the torn remnants of her past.”