Coco Chanel

For other uses, see Coco Chanel (disambiguation).

Coco Chanel
Chanel in 1931
Born
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel

(1883-08-19)19 August 1883[1]
Saumur, France
Died10 January 1971(1971-01-10) (aged 87)
Paris, France
Resting placeBois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne, Switzerland
Occupations
Known for
LabelChanel
AwardsNeiman Marcus Fashion Award, 1957

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (/ʃəˈnɛl/ shə-NEL, French: [ɡabʁijɛl bɔnœʁ kɔko ʃanɛl] ⓘ; 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971)[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5] Chanel began a liaison with a German diplomat/spy she had known before the war, Baron (Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage.[6][7] 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.[8] When the war ended, Chanel moved to Switzerland before returning to Paris in 1954 to revive her fashion house.

Chanel "interlocking C" logo
  1. ^ "How Poverty Shaped Coco Chanel". Time. 19 August 2015. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Coco Chanel Biography". Biography.com (FYI/A&E Networks). Archived from the original on 22 April 2019. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  3. ^ Horton, Ros; Simmons, Sally (2007). Women Who Changed the World. Quercus. p. 103. ISBN 978-1847240262. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
  4. ^ Chaney, Lisa (6 October 2011). Chanel: An Intimate Life. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0141972992. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  5. ^ Vaughan, Hal (2011). Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War. New York: Knopf. pp. 160–64. ISBN 978-0307592637.
  6. ^ Kloth, Hans Michael; Kolbe, Corina (26 August 2008). "Modelegende Chanel: Wie Coco fast den Krieg beendet hätte" [Fashion legend Chanel: How Coco almost ended the war]. Spiegel Online (in German). Hamburg. Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  7. ^ Doerries, Reinhard (2009). Hitler's Intelligence Chief: Walter Schellenberg. New York: Enigma Books. pp. 165–66. ISBN 978-1936274130. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
  8. ^ "Strong whiff of wartime scandal clings to Coco Chanel". Raw Story. Agence France-Presse. 7 January 2021. Archived from the original on 10 November 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2021.