“My life didn’t please me, so I created my life.”
Coco Chanel may be best known for the iconic style she defined, but her great work was about much more than that. It was about determination. It was about energy. It was about liberty; liberty from the ‘corseted silhouette’ imposed to physically and emotionally restrict women.
It was about freedom.
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Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on August 19, 1883 into a life starved of the glamour that she would come to be synonymous with. Her mother, Jeanne, was a laundrywoman for a French poor house, while father Albert travelled the country selling clothes.
Jeanne and Albert were unmarried until 1884, when Jeanne’s family effectively bribed Albert into wedding her. The family, which included five children, lived in a one-bedroom lodging.
When Chanel was 12, Jeanne died. Unable or unwilling to take care of the kids, Albert sent the two boys to work as labourers, while the three girls were delivered to an orphanage run by the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
It was a tough time, but the six years at the orphanage set the foundation for Chanel’s career. It was here that she learnt to sew, and it is said that her brand’s iconic double-C logo was inspired by symbols on the building’s windows.
At the age of 18, Chanel was sent to a boarding house in Moulin, a town in central France. As she continued her education, she spent her free time performing as a singer at local cafes. It was at this time that Chanel received the stage name Coco, an allusion to cocotte, the French word for ‘mistress’, and to her coy, alluring performance style.
In 1906, when Chanel was 23, she moved to the resort town of Vichy in order to pursue her stage career. Though her charm impressed, her voice did not, and she was forced to become a ‘water waiter’, delivering the purportedly curative mineral water sourced from the local spas to tourists.
It didn’t take long before she realised she did not have a future in singing, and so she came back to Moulins. It was a fortuitous return; she soon met Etienne Balsan, a former French military officer and heir to a wealthy textile company. She became his mistress, and she lived with him in his chateau for the next three years.
For the first time in her life, Chanel got to experience “the rich life”, indulging in decadence and attending various parties. It was at one of these parties that she met Captain Arthur Edward ‘Boy’ Capel, and the two quickly began an affair. Boy installed Chanel in a Parisian apartment, and in 1928, he and Balsan co-financed her initial shops. The first of these was established on Rue Cambon, one of the definitive streets for fashion in the world.
Chanel started by selling hats, hats she was already making for herself and her friends. They were stripped of the wild embellishments that were traditional at the time. “Nothing makes a woman look older than obvious expensiveness, ornateness, complication,” she would later state. Instead, Chanel’s designs were simple and chic, perfectly pairing with the schoolgirl-like style that she embodied.
“We ought to have been on guard against that boyish head. It was going to give us every kind of shock, and produce, out of its little conjurer’s hat, gowns and coiffures and jewels and boutiques,” said Paul Poiret, the so-called King of Fashion.
But he didn’t, and neither did most of Chanel’s competitors. Within five years she was concurrently running three stores, and started selling casual, but high quality clothing alongside her hats. She also had the support of family. Every day, her sister Antoinette and aunt Adrienne donned Chanel clothing and walked through the town, essentially as living advertisements for the brand. As a result, reputation grew, fuelled by Chanel’s passion. In her personal life, she was highly emotional and overwhelmed, but work gave her stability and direction, and so she worked harder and harder.
“I am not here to have fun, or to spend money like water. I am here to make a fortune” she told her team, and within by 1916 the company no longer required Boy’s financial support. In 1918 their romantic relationship ended when Boy married another woman. Nevertheless, they remained close, until his sudden death in a car accident the following year.
“His death was a terrible blow to me. In losing Capel, I lost everything. What followed was not a life of happiness, I have to say.”
Even so, professionally speaking, Chanel grew from strength to strength. In 1921, she opened an early incarnation of the modern fashion boutique, first focusing on clothing and then expanding to offer jewellery and fragrances. The first of these was Chanel No. 5, arguably the most popular fragrance of all time, and certainly one of Chanel’s most iconic creations.
That same year, she started designing costumes for MGM films, but the relationship didn’t last long. Hollywood wanted extravagance, in stark contrast to Chanel’s simple, refined garments. “Hollywood is the capital of bad taste … and it is vulgar,” she later declared.
By 1935, Chanel was employing 4000 women, but the company was losing its avant-garde edge with the emergence of such designers as Elsa Schiaparelli, who was collaborating with surrealist artists like Dali and Cocteau to great acclaim. Chanel herself attempted to collaborate with Cocteau on his theatre piece Oedipe Rex. It was a disaster.
As World War II exploded, Chanel was forced to close her stores. When the Nazis invaded, she became an informer for the SS, but managed to avoid prosecution following the war.
Chanel moved to Switzerland in 1945, and began preaching against the “illogical” fashion designs created for women by male couturiers who had no sense or care for how the waist cinchers, heavy skirts and corsets physically restricted the wearer.
She called for revolution. “Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful.”
Eventually, she decided to reenter the fashion world after a 15 year hiatus to lead the revolution herself. The French rejected her new products in response to her wartime associations, but the British and Americans welcomed her return with open arms.
In 1971, at the age of 87, Chanel remained active. She was working on that year’s spring catalogue when she started feeling ill, and went to bed. Coco Chanel died on Sunday, January 10. It is said that her final words were “you see; this is how you die”.
Four decades after the death of its legendary founder, Chanel continues to define the fashion and cosmetic industries. This is in no small part a result of the company’s continued dedication to Chanel’s vision, and dedication to excellence.