Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel ( ; ; 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post–World War I era with popularising a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing into jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product, and Chanel herself designed her famed interlocked-CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s.

Her couture house closed in 1939, with the outbreak of World War II. Chanel stayed in France during the Nazi German occupation and collaborated with the occupiers and the Vichy puppet regime. Declassified documents revealed that she had collaborated directly with the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst. One plan in late 1943 was for her to carry an SS peace overture to Churchill to end the war. Chanel began a liaison with a German diplomat/spy she had known before the war, Baron (Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage. After the end of the war, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator due to intervention by her friend—British prime minister Winston Churchill. When the war ended, Chanel moved to Switzerland before returning to Paris in 1954 to revive her fashion house.

Early life Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in 1883 to Eugénie Jeanne Devolle Chanel, known as Jeanne, a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire. She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, had been born less than a year earlier. living a nomadic life, travelling to and from market towns. The family resided in run-down lodgings. In 1884, he married Jeanne Devolle, persuaded to legitimate his children by her family who had "united, effectively, to pay Albert". The couple had six children—Julia, Gabrielle, Alphonse (the first boy, born 1885), Antoinette (born 1887), Lucien, and Augustin (who died at six months) Jeanne died at the age of 32.

Aspirations for a stage career Having learned to sew during her six years at Aubazine, Chanel found employment as a seamstress. When not sewing, she sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. Chanel made her stage debut singing at a cafe-concert (a popular entertainment venue of the era) in a Moulins pavilion, La Rotonde. She was a poseuse, a performer who entertained the crowd between star turns. The money earned was what the performers managed to collect when the plate was passed. It was at this time that Gabrielle acquired the name "Coco" when she spent her nights singing in the cabaret, often the song, "Who Has Seen Coco?" She often liked to say the nickname was given to her by her father. Others believe "Coco" came from Ko Ko Ri Ko, and Qui qu'a vu Coco, or it was an allusion to the French word for kept woman, cocotte. As an entertainer, Chanel radiated a juvenile allure that tantalised the military habitués of the cabaret.

In 1908, Chanel began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel. Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed Chanel in an apartment in Paris, or she adapted the design of the whisky decanter Capel used. She so much admired it that she wished to reproduce it in "exquisite, expensive, delicate glass". The couple spent time together at fashionable resorts such as Deauville, but despite Chanel's hopes that they would settle together, Capel was never faithful to her. Their affair lasted nine years. Even after Capel married an English aristocrat, Lady Diana Wyndham in 1918, he did not completely break off with Chanel. He died in a car accident on 22 December 1919. A roadside memorial at the site of Capel's accident is said to have been commissioned by Chanel. Twenty-five years after the event, Chanel, then residing in Switzerland, confided to her friend, Paul Morand, "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." As this location already housed an established clothing business, Chanel sold only her millinery creations at this address. Chanel's millinery career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat wore her hats in Fernand Nozière's play Bel Ami in 1912. Subsequently, Dorziat modelled Chanel's hats again in photographs published in Les Modes. The Biarritz shop was installed not as a store-front, but in a villa opposite the casino. After one year of operation, the business proved to be so lucrative that in 1916 Chanel was able to reimburse Capel's original investment.

In the spring of 1920, Chanel was introduced to the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. During the summer, Chanel discovered that the Stravinsky family sought a place to live, having left the Russian Soviet Republic after the war. She invited them to her new home, Bel Respiro, in the Paris suburb of Garches, until they could find a suitable residence. Chanel also guaranteed the new (1920) Ballets Russes production of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps ('The Rite of Spring') against financial loss with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev, said to be 300,000 francs. In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors since 1917 of the eminent perfume and cosmetics house Bourjois. They created a corporate entity, Parfums Chanel, and the Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for the production, marketing, and distribution of Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers would receive seventy per cent of the profits, and Théophile Bader twenty per cent. For ten per cent of the stock, Chanel licensed her name to Parfums Chanel and withdrew from involvement in business operations.

The writer Colette, who moved in the same social circles as Chanel, provided a whimsical description of Chanel at work in her atelier, which appeared in Prisons et Paradis (1932):If every human face bears a resemblance to some animal, then Mademoiselle Chanel is a small black bull. That tuft of curly black hair, the attribute of bull-calves, falls over her brow all the way to the eyelids and dances with every maneuver of her head. When asked why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster, she is supposed to have said: "There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel."

During Chanel's affair with the Duke of Westminster in the 1930s, her style began to reflect her personal emotions. Her inability to reinvent the little black dress was a sign of such reality. She began to design a "less is more" aesthetic.

Designing for film

In 1931, while in Monte Carlo, Chanel became acquainted with Samuel Goldwyn. She was introduced through a mutual friend, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin to the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. Goldwyn offered Chanel a tantalising proposition. For the sum of a million dollars (approximately US$75 million today), he would bring her to Hollywood twice a year to design costumes for his stars. Chanel accepted the offer. Accompanying her on her first trip to Hollywood was her friend, Misia Sert.

En route to California from New York, travelling in a white train carriage luxuriously outfitted for her use, Chanel was interviewed by Collier's magazine in 1932. She said that she had agreed to go to Hollywood to "see what the pictures have to offer me and what I have to offer the pictures".

Her experience with American film making left Chanel with a dislike for Hollywood's film business and a distaste for the film world's culture, which she called "infantile". Chanel went on to design the costumes for several French films, including Jean Renoir's 1939 film La Règle du jeu, in which she was credited as La Maison Chanel. Chanel introduced the left-wing Renoir to Luchino Visconti, aware that the shy Italian hoped to work in film. Renoir was favourably impressed by Visconti and brought him in to work on his next film project.

World War II In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops, maintaining her apartment situated above the couture house at 31 Rue de Cambon. She said that it was not a time for fashion; Ultimately, the Wertheimers and Chanel came to a mutual accommodation, renegotiating the original 1924 contract. On 17 May 1947, Chanel received wartime profits from the sale of Chanel No. 5, an amount equivalent to some million in 2022 valuation. Her future share would be two per cent of all Chanel No. 5 sales worldwide (projected to gross her $34 million a year as of 2022), making her one of the richest women in the world at the time the contract was renegotiated. In addition, Pierre Wertheimer agreed to an unusual stipulation proposed by Chanel herself: Wertheimer agreed to pay all of Chanel's living expenses—from the trivial to the large—for the rest of her life.

Activity as Nazi agent

Declassified archival documents unearthed by Hal Vaughan reveal that the French Préfecture de Police had a document on Chanel in which she was described as "Couturier and perfumer. Pseudonym: Westminster. Agent reference: F 7124. Signalled as suspect in the file" (Pseudonyme: Westminster. Indicatif d'agent: F 7124. Signalée comme suspecte au fichier).

Vaughan established that Chanel committed herself to the German cause as early as 1941 and worked for General Walter Schellenberg, chief of the German intelligence agency Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD) at the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) in Berlin.

Operation Modellhut In late 2014, French intelligence agencies declassified and released documents confirming Coco Chanel's role with Germany in World War II. Working as a spy, Chanel was directly involved in a plan for the Third Reich to take control of Madrid. Such documents identify Chanel as an agent in the German military intelligence, the Abwehr. Chanel visited Madrid in 1943 to convince the British ambassador to Spain, Sir Samuel Hoare, a friend of Winston Churchill, about a possible German surrender once the war was leaning towards an Allied victory. One of the most prominent missions she was involved in was Operation Modellhut ("Operation Model Hat"). Her duty was to act as a messenger from Hitler's Foreign Intelligence to Churchill, to prove that some of the Third Reich attempted peace with the Allies.

Churchill and Chanel's friendship marks its origin in the 1920s, with the eruption of Chanel's scandalous beginning when falling in love with the Duke of Westminster. Churchill's intervention at the end of the war prevented Chanel's punishment for spy collaborations, and ultimately salvaged her legacy. Historian Guillaume Pollack disputes the evidence saying the membership card, issued in 1957, has clearly been whited out before "Eric" was written in with no supporting evidence from witnesses on file that she was ever in the resistance and that "Eric" primarily operated in the Balkans, not where Chanel lived.

Statement by Chanel Group and response When Vaughan's book was published in August 2011, his disclosure of the contents of recently declassified military intelligence documents generated considerable controversy about Chanel's activities. Maison de Chanel issued a statement, portions of which were published by several media outlets. Chanel corporate "refuted the claim" (of espionage), while acknowledging that company officials had read only media excerpts of the book.

The Chanel Group stated, What is certain is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the War. Clearly it wasn't the best period to have a love story with a German, even if Baron von Dincklage was English by his mother and she (Chanel) knew him before the War. In an interview given to the Associated Press, author Vaughan discussed the unexpected turn of his research, I was looking for something else and I come across this document saying 'Chanel is a Nazi agent' ... Then I really started hunting through all of the archives, in the United States, in London, in Berlin, and in Rome and I came across not one, but 20, 30, 40 absolutely solid archival materials on Chanel and her lover, Hans Günther von Dincklage, who was a professional Abwehr spy. Bettina Ballard, the influential editor of American Vogue, remained loyal to Chanel, and featured the model Marie-Hélène Arnaud—the "face of Chanel" in the 1950s—in the March 1954 issue, and orders for the clothing that Arnaud had modelled soon poured in from the US.

Death As 1971 began, Chanel was 87 years old, tired, and ailing. She carried out her usual routine of preparing the spring catalogue. She had gone for a long drive on the afternoon of Saturday, 9 January. Soon after, feeling ill, she went to bed early. She died on Sunday, 10 January 1971, at the Hotel Ritz, where she had resided for more than 30 years.

Her funeral was held at the Église de la Madeleine; her fashion models occupied the first seats during the ceremony and her coffin was covered with white flowers—camellias, gardenias, orchids, azaleas and a few red roses. Salvador Dalí, Marlene Dietrich, Serge Lifar, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jacques Chazot, Yves Saint Laurent and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild attended her funeral in the Church of the Madeleine. Her grave is in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Most of her estate was inherited by her nephew André Palasse, who lived in Switzerland, and his two daughters, who lived in Paris.

Jersey fabric

Chanel's initial triumph was her innovative use of jersey, a machine knit material manufactured for her by the firm Rodier. Chanel's early wool jersey travelling suit consisted of a cardigan jacket and pleated skirt, paired with a low-belted pullover top. This ensemble, worn with low-heeled shoes, became the casual look in expensive women's wear. Chanel continued this trend with Slav-inspired designs in the early 1920s. The beading and embroidery on her garments at this time was exclusively executed by Kitmir, an embroidery house founded by an exiled Russian aristocrat, the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who was the sister of Chanel's erstwhile lover, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. In addition to the headscarf, Chanel clothing from this period featured square-neck, long belted blouses alluding to Russian muzhiks (peasant) attire known as the roubachka. the Chanel tweed suit was designed for comfort and practicality. It consisted of a jacket and skirt in supple and light wool or mohair tweed, and a blouse and jacket lining in jersey or silk. Chanel did not stiffen the material or use shoulder pads, as was common in contemporary fashion. She cut the jackets on the straight grain, without adding bust darts. This allowed for quick and easy movement. She designed the neckline to leave the neck comfortably free and added functional pockets. For a higher level of comfort, the skirt had a grosgrain stay around the waist, instead of a belt. More importantly, meticulous attention was placed on detail during fittings. Measurements were taken of a customer in a standing position with arms folded at shoulder height. Chanel conducted tests with models, having them walk around, step up to a platform as if climbing stairs of an imaginary bus, and bend as if getting into a low-slung sports car. Chanel wanted to make sure women could do all of these things while wearing her suit, without accidentally exposing parts of their body they wanted covered. Each client would have repeated adjustments until their suit was comfortable enough for them to perform daily activities with comfort and ease.

Camellia The camellia had an established association used in Alexandre Dumas' literary work, La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias). Its heroine and her story had resonated for Chanel since her youth. The flower was associated with the courtesan, who would wear a camellia to advertise her availability. The camellia came to be identified with The House of Chanel; the designer first used it in 1933 as a decorative element on a white-trimmed black suit. In 1920, Chanel herself vowed that, while observing an audience at the opera, she would dress all women in black. The spare look generated widespread criticism from male journalists, who complained: "no more bosom, no more stomach, no more rump ... Feminine fashion of this moment in the 20th century will be baptized lop off everything." thumb

In 1933, designer Paul Iribe collaborated with Chanel in the creation of extravagant jewellery pieces commissioned by the International Guild of Diamond Merchants. The collection, executed exclusively in diamonds and platinum, was exhibited for public viewing and drew a large audience; some 3,000 attendees were recorded in a one-month period. While details of the classic bag have been reworked, such as the 1980s update by Karl Lagerfeld when the clasp and lock were redesigned to incorporate the Chanel logo and leather was interlaced through the shoulder chain, the bag has retained its original basic form. The quilted outside was influenced by the jackets worn by jockeys,

Television Coco Chanel (2008) was a television movie starring Shirley MacLaine as the 70-year-old Chanel. Directed by Christian Duguay, the film also starred Barbora Bobuľová as the young Chanel and Olivier Sitruk as Boy Capel. Chanel is portrayed by Romane Portail in episode 5 of season 2 of the Canadian television period detective series Frankie Drake Mysteries "Dressed to Kill" (22 October 2018) when she hires private detective Frankie Drake to find who shot at her in Toronto. The character "Coco Pommel", from the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, is inspired by Coco Chanel. The character Coco Adel in the american animated show Rwby is a reference to her She is portrayed by Anouk Grinberg in the 2023 6-episode Disney+ mini-series Cristóbal Balenciaga. Coco Chanel at the pinacle of her career, her collaboration with the Nazis in WW2 and the subsequent revival of her fashion line in the early post-war era, is portrayed by Juliette Binoche in the 2024-launched Apple TV+ series The New Look created by Todd A. Kessler. Claes Bang portrays her Nazi lover "Spatz" i.e. Hans Von Dincklage, while Ben Mendelsohn plays Christian Dior.