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Her original name is Gabrielle Chanel, and her pseudonym is Coco Chanel. She was born in the House of Charity in Samur, France. Her parents were called Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle. -
Her mother Jeanne died when Coco had 12 years. And her dad took Coco and her sisters to the Roman orphanage of Aubazine in Corrèze, and her brothers to to a cruel peasant family. -
At 18 years she was transferred a religious boarding school of Notre Dame, and she was until 21 years. She started working as a seamstress and learned to make hats in a haberdashery in Moulins, and she combined it with her performances in La Rotonde, a café-concert. At that time they started calling her Coco. -
He fell in love with Étienne Balsan, a wealthy young man.
She had a six-year relationship. He invited her to a castle of Royallieu, where his lover also lived. Coco knew the luxury and leisure of the time. -
She began to develop her talent as a designer in Paris, as a pastime she had made hats for her friends in Royallieu, simple but with grace and ordered a trouser to the tailor of the town that she had designed herself. -
A friend of Etienne who played polo, called Arthur 'Boy' Capel and Coco had a mutual attraction. Etienne decided to lend him the ground floor of his bachelor flat in Paris. Coco moved and started her hat business. -
In 1910 he opened his first Chanel Models, at 21 Rue Cambon in Paris, where he sold hats. -
After the First World War, Boy decided to break up with Coco to marry an aristocrat. Coco designed a pair of white satin pants that became very popular. There was an outbreak of female liberation with the end of the war. Coco bought La Milanaise, she cut her hair like a boy and many women imitated her. And Boy went back to look for Coco. -
Coco decided to copy the jewel and sent them to the market, also introduced the Chanel Suit, raised the skirt from the ankle to above the knee. And he extended his boutique on 31 Rue Cambon, to numbers 27 and 29, and opened a branch in Cannes. He had one of the most important events of his life, he launched his perfume Chanel No. 5, a perfume that consists of 80 ingredients and is a classic today. -
Coco transformed the black, in the "little black dress" a great success at that time as currently. -
Coco was hired by MGM and they paid her a million dollars to travel twice a year to Hollywood to dress her stars. She was received by the great Greta Garbo. Cocó dressed Greta, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn. The painter Salvador Dalí lived six months in his house accompanied by Gala. Coco was Dalí's lover "to annoy Gala". -
She returned to París. Coco reopened her fashion house because she was bored -
At 80 years old, she was millionaire but she was still working. She was a lonely woman and her fragance was numer one in sales. She said: "I don't complain about anything, because I lived intensely!" -
The 10th of January of 1971, she had left with her friend Claude Baillen to take a walk; when theycame back Coco stretched in her bed of the Hotel Ritz and she said: "Look, that's how she dies" and she died.
Coco Chanel did not have children but the son of her sister Julia-Berthe, as if he were her own child -
In 1913 she opened a fashion house in the resort of Deauville, where she also sold innovative women's clothing, which included simple and functional models, and eliminated the corsets of the Belle Epoque.