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People Worth Remembering: Coco Chanel • Vol. 19: #43 • Tidbits of CV
Coco Chanel
You've no doubt heard of Chanel No. 5, but what do you know about the woman behind this famous scent that bears her name? Follow along as Tidbits looks at Coco Chanel, and some of the highlights of this remarkable lady's life.
• It might seem that world-renowned fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel led an elegant, privileged life, but her beginnings were actually quite humble. She was born in a French village in 1883, one of six children in an impoverished family of a street peddler father and a laundress mother. Her 32-year-old mother died when Gabrielle was 11, and her father, overwhelmed and unable to provide for the family, placed her and her two sisters in a charity orphanage operated by Catholic nuns. They never saw their father again.
• During her six years in the orphanage, Gabrielle was taught to sew, a useful skill that literally shaped the rest of her life. When she left the institution, she found employment as a seamstress and milliner, with a side job as a cabaret singer, where she gained local popularity and earned the nickname Coco.
• She became well known among many aristocratic cabaret patrons, and through her contacts she began to mingle in upper class social circles. With help from some financial benefactors in 1921, she began to dabble in perfumery, an interest she had long held.
• Wanting to create a unique perfume that represented “a real woman,” the scents of floral and woods were blended and named after the fifth sample that was presented to her, naming it Chanel No. 5. After much experimentation, a variation of No. 5 was launched the following year, which she named Chanel No. 22.
• When Coco was 27, her current love interest financed her first shop in Paris, and another boutique followed three years later. In 1923, the Chanel tweed suit was introduced, a jacket and skirt in light wool, with a jersey or silk blouse. Her aim was to make clothes that were both striking and more comfortable for women.
• Perhaps Chanel’s most famous creation was the “little black dress,” which she debuted in 1926. It was a simple yet sophisticated straight, long-sleeved, drop-waist, calf-length sheath dress of crepe de chine. It was worn with a string of pearls. Vogue magazine declared that the dress would become “a sort of uniform for all women of taste,” describing it as “the frock that all the world will wear.” Chanel produced it in wool and chenille for daytime wear, and elegant dresses in satin, crepe, and velvet for the evening. Chanel’s style was to keep the dress simple, but pair it with the perfect accessories to “dress it up” or “dress it down.”
• By 1927, Coco Chanel owned five properties on the exclusive fashion district’s Rue Cambon, properties that the company still occupies.
• Coco had a lavish apartment on the second floor of one of the 18th-century buildings, filled with luxurious furnishings, objects from ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and Italy. Yet she never slept there. She chose to reside in a suite at the Ritz Hotel for 34 years, walking back and forth each day. She used the apartment “to work, read, daydream, rest, lunch and entertain.” It was Coco’s habit to notify the staff of her arrival time in order to have all the rooms spritzed with No. 5 perfume.
• By 1935, Chanel’s company had more than 4,000 employees. But with the outbreak of World War II, she shut down her business, releasing the workers, and closing the stores. Post-War, she left Paris for a self-imposed exile in Switzerland and at her country house in the French Riviera.
• In 1954, after her couture house had been closed for 15 years, at age 70, Chanel re-entered the fashion world, launching a comeback collection of new designs.
• Coco Chanel was 87 years old when she died in 1971. Today, the company produces 137 different perfumes. Her Chanel Grand Extrait sells for $4,200 per ounce.
