Chanel, Coco

(1883-1971)
Chanel

Overview

Gabrielle Chanel, known for most of her adult life as “Coco,” created a fashion revolution in women’s clothing, not once, but twice. In the 1920s, she introduced comfortable, simplistic designs that stood in stark contrast to the popular designs that incorporated numerous frills and ruffles. Again, in the 1950s, she freed women from the trends toward tight–fitting, uncomfortable clothing and returned them to simple elegance and functionality. Chanel was larger than life, a legend before her death and revered after. Over three decades after her death, Chanel remains a highly respected line of clothing and perfumes.

Personal Life

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, born on August 19, 1883, in a poorhouse in Saumur, France, was the second of five children born to Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle. Her parents did not marry until Chanel was one year old. Her father, a migrant market merchant, moved from town to town peddling his wares, sometimes with and sometimes without his family in tow. In 1894 her mother lost her health after a difficult pregnancy that resulted in the death of the infant. In February 1895, Chanel’s mother died. Her father, never known to be dependable, abandoned his five children, never to be seen by them again. Chanel and her two sisters were placed in a boarding school in the town of Moulins run by nuns. Her two brothers were placed with a farm family, as unpaid child laborers.

Many of her memories of her childhood are tainted with feelings of being unloved and unwanted, despite her
elaborate and baseless stories of her father’s eventual return to reunite the family. In reality, during the six years of her residence there, she slept in the unheated dormitory and sat at the table with the other destitute children who had no family to pay the tuition. She would never accept or admit the extent of the poverty of her youth. Even as an adult, Chanel consistently refused to admit her humble beginnings and talked instead of being raised by her aunts. But always her tales were obscure or contradictory, and the scenario or characters often changed as the moment suited her.

When Chanel was old enough to leave, the nuns found her a job at a local boutique, the House of Grampayre, where she worked as a shop assistant and seamstress. Word circulated of Chanel’s adept needlework, and soon she had customers coming directly to her for alterations. She also worked at a tailor shop once a week, where she met several calvarymen who took an interest in the petite, but spunky, Chanel. In their company, Chanel began going to the local cafe, La Rotonde. Amateurs were invited to sing between shows, and Chanel, always known for her boldness, stepped up on stage one night. Chanel’s singing voice was marginal, but the support of her escorts encouraged the crowd. According to the tale, Chanel sang of a poor girl who had lost her dog Coco; the crowd began to call back to her “Coco! Coco!” thus bestowing on her the nickname by which she would be known the remainder of her life.

While frequenting La Rotonde, Chanel met Etienne Balsan, a calvaryman from a wealthy French family. When Balsan invited her to visit his racing horse farm in 1903, 20–year–old Chanel accepted and stayed. The young couple enjoyed each other’s company, but the relationship was far from perfect. Balsan loved horse racing, women, and parties. Chanel was well aware that men such as the wealthy Balsan did not marry orphaned seamstresses. Nonetheless, during her time with Balsan, she became an expert horsewoman, and was introduced to a social group well beyond her own standing. Through them Chanel first began to draw attention as a fashion designer, primarily at first as a hat designer. When the women appeared at the racetrack with copies of Chanel’s hats, the tabloids took note and wrote of the new styles.

As Chanel began making a name for herself within Balsan’s social circle, she began to envision herself as a professional milliner with a shop in Paris. Balsan put off her attempts to convince him to finance her idea, but then in 1914 she met the love of her life, Arthur “Boy” Chapel, who found it perfectly fitting that Chanel should want a business of her own. Chapel, an Englishman, and Chanel met during a week–long fox hunt, and when he left to return to England, Chanel caught up to him at the train station, without a bag in hand. Balsan, quite in concert with his nature, decided to live and let live, even allowing Chanel to set up her millinery shop in his Paris apartment. With Chapel’s financial help, Chanel opened a new shop at 21 Rue Cambon. Her new simple and comfortable designs became popular, and success soon followed; she soon added clothing to her selection of hats. People were as fascinated by Chanel as they were by her designs, often coming into her shop just to see what she looked like. As she grew in fame, her illegitimate birth and lower class origins gradually disappeared, and Chanel became a full, if unique, member of Parisian society.

Chapel, who never gave up his playboy ways despite his sincere affection for Chanel, eventually married the daughter of a lord. However, he soon renewed his relationship with Chanel, finding he missed her greatly. When he died in an automobile accident in 1919, Chanel was crushed. According to biographer Axel Madsen, Chanel later said, “We were made for each other. That
he was there and that he loved me, and that he knew I loved him was all that mattered.”

Although Chanel had numerous and often well–publicized relationships after Chapel’s death, including the Duke of Westminster and a Nazi officer, she never married or had children. She retained her residence and boutique at 21 Rue Cambon the remainder of her life, although she always slept across the street at the Ritz Hotel. She died at the Ritz on January 10, 1971; she was 87 years old.

Career Details

Chanel opened her first business, a millinery, in 1909 with the assistance of Balsan and Chapel. In 1915 Chapel helped Chanel open additional shops in the coastal resort towns of Deauville and Biarritz. It was while spending a leisurely summer with Chapel in Deauville in 1913 that Chanel first invented her famous sportswear design. According to Madsen, “In 1913, knits were considered unsuitable and too limp and lifeless for anything but underwear, flannel too working class or masculine, to be stylish for women. She made jersey chic with her simple gray and navy dresses that were quite unlike anything women had worn before.” According to Chanel’s later retelling, she cut the front of an old jersey so she would not have to pull it over her head. She then added a ribbon, a collar, and a knot. When people asked where she got her dress, she volunteered to sell them one. Later she told biographers, “My dear, my fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville.”

As she would do throughout her career, Chanel created clothing that was backed on functionality and comfort. Unlike the current styles that emphasized frills and tight–fitting corsets, Chanel’s new designs emphasized straight flowing lines with plain colors—usually gray, beige, and navy—that displayed an air of simple elegance. The rich flocked to her designs—Chanel single–handedly created a women’s fashion revolution.

When Chapel died in 1919, Chanel was crushed, but she was no longer in need of his financial backing. By that time she had a staff of 300 and was selling her dresses for over 7,000 francs (over $2,000 in current terms) each. The House of Chanel was coming into the height of its success. According to the Smithsonian, “Harper’s Bazaar ran the first picture ever of her couture, ‘Chanel’s charming chemise dress.’ No collar, no bodice, but a deep V–necked, near–masculine waistcoast, no puffs, no frills, with a large hat with a twist of fur. She was stealing on the early march on the flapper look of the upcoming ’20s.” During the early 1920s, Chanel also designed costumes for the theatre and ballet.

In 1923 Chanel began selling her trademark perfume, Chanel No. 5. Collaborating with well–known perfume expert Ernest Beaux, Chanel wanted to create a new scent, void of the flowery, rose–water smells of the popular perfumes of the day. Starting with benzyl acetate, a coal tar derivative that smells like jasmine, Beaux added real jasmine. Of the final seven samples, Chanel chose the fifth, thus the name Chanel No. 5. She also designed the simple square–shaped bottle for her new perfume, a drastic change from the fancy bottles on the market. Chanel wanted to make No. 5, which she referred to as “a woman’s scent,” the most expensive perfume in the world; it definitely became the most popular. To meet the demand, Chanel entered into an agreement with a perfume company to manufacture the product. Although she made a fortune on the perfume, throughout her lifetime she was convinced that the deal had been heavily weighted in favor of the perfumer and that she had been cheated out of a huge sum of money.

1883: Born.

1909: Opened first business, a millinery, in Paris.

1910: Moved business to 21 Rue Cambon, where it remains throughout her life.

1913: Designed first women’s sportswear.

1923: Introduced new fragrance, Chanel No. 5.

1925: Introduced what becomes known as the classic Chanel suit.

1926: Created the highly praised and often copied “little black dress.”

1939: Closed the House of Chanel.

1954: Staged a successful comeback at the age of seventy.

1971: Died.

In 1925 Chanel introduced what became known as the classic Chanel suit—a collarless cardigan jacket with tight–fitting sleeves and braid trim, matched with a plain but graceful skirt. The following year she created the “little black dress,” which was a revolution in color and style, as black was traditionally associated with funerals. Vogue called the dress the “Ford” of eveningwear, based on its functionality and enduring quality. She added to her fashion creations by designing costume jewelry, mixing real and imitation pearls and gems. Her jewelry designs
added flair and color to her simplistic clothing designs. Chanel, who could not draw her designs, often created them on live models. Her talents were extensive, and along with her standard suit and little black dress designs, Chanel added glitzy eveningwear and cocktail dresses. She created a new trend in women’s fashion when she began attending social functions wearing pants—nearly unheard of until Chanel.

During World War II, Chanel’s reputation suffered. In October 1939, just weeks after the war began, Chanel closed the House of Chanel and dismissed all her workers. Despite attempts by her employees and the French government to force her to reopen, Chanel remained closed. To add injury to insult, when Nazi forces overran France, Chanel began a relationship with a young handsome Nazi soldier, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, known as Spatz. With German permission, Chanel continued to live at the Ritz. When France was liberated in 1944, Chanel underwent three hours of interrogation by French authorities about her relationship with Spatz. She was released, but her actions had tarnished her public image. For the next decade, she wandered about, living in a self–imposed exile for a time.

In 1954, at the age of seventy, Chanel staged a comeback and reopened the House of Chanel. Complaining that the new lines of clothing coming out were much too constrictive, Chanel later explained that the problem stemmed from the fact that men had taken over women’s fashion design, and men, declared Chanel, did not know how to make clothing for women. She debuted her new line of clothes on February 5, 1954, in Paris. The show was highly publicized and highly anticipated, but the affair received shockingly poor reviews, with the London Daily Express running the condemning headline “A Fiasco—Audience Gasped!” The European press roundly criticized Chanel for depending too heavily on her previous fashion designs. However, the response in the United States was different; Life magazine ran a four–page spread that praised Chanel’s comfortable style. The following month a Chanel navy blue suit appeared on the cover of French Vogue. When Chanel had another show in May 1955, this time her designs were met with approval and enthusiasm. Triumphant, Chanel had reclaimed her past fame and legendary status.

Social and Economic Impact

When Chanel died on January 10, 1971, at the Ritz Hotel, she left behind an estate worth over $90 million (in present terms). She had nearly single–handedly transformed women’s fashion from the frills and constrictive designs to loose–fitting, easy–wearing clothing that provided both style and functionality. After her death, several assistants assumed command of her business, but the business stagnated during the remainder of the 1970s. During the 1980s Karl Lagerfeld took over the design for Chanel fashions and began to focus on a younger customer base. He has been routinely praised for his ability to retain the quality and style of the original Chanel. The company owns 100 boutiques throughout the world and is one of the most recognized names in fashion and perfume.

Chanel never spoke of feminism, but referred frequently to femininity, and yet she challenged and conquered many social limits in women’s fashion. Madsen concluded, “Coco Chanel had influence before she had money. She was the Pied Piper who led women away from complicated, uncomfortable clothes to a simple, uncluttered, and casual look that is still synonymous with her name. . . . From beyond the grave, her name is enough to define a pair of shoes, a hat, a pocketbook, a suit, a perfume. It conveys prestige, quality, taste, and unmistakable style. It is a sign of excellence, of fulfilled sensibilities for women who want to be in fashion without screaming fashion.”

Chanel’s success was powered by the strength of her personality, her desire for independence, and her need to be different. Her impact can be readily seen in the simple but smart designs that dominate twenty–first–century women’s fashions. The irony is, of course, that in her desire to be different, Chanel created a trend that was copied by everyone. She became that which she had first rebelled against. And yet her triumph was that she, a poor orphaned girl, influenced and reigned supreme in the highest social circles.

Sources of Information

Bibliography

“Chanel.” Biography.com, 2000. Available at http://www.biography.com.

“Chanel.” Chanel, Inc. Available at http://www.chanel.com.

“Chez Chanel: Couturiere and Courtesan, Coco Made Her Own Rules as She Freed Women From Old Fussy, Frilly Fashions.” Smithsonian, July 2001.

“Gabrielle Chanel.” Contemporary Designers. 3rd ed. New York: St. James Press, 1997.

Madsen, Axel. Chanel: A Woman of Her Own. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990.

“Time 100: Artist and Entertainers. The Designer: Coco Chanel.” Time.com, 2001. Available at http://www.time.com.