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Along with Paul Poiret, Chanel was credited in the post- World War I era with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing, realising her design aesthetic in jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No.

She is the only fashion designer listed on TIME magazine's list of the 1. Chanel designed her iconic interlocked- CC monogram, meaning Coco Chanel, using it since the 1. Chanel was known for her lifelong determination, ambition, and energy which she applied to her professional and social life. She both achieved financial success as a businesswoman and catapulted to social prominence in French high society, thanks to the connections she made through her work.

These included many artists and craftspeople to whom she became a patron. Her social connections appeared to encourage a highly conservative personal outlook. Rumors arose about Chanel's activities in the course of the German occupation of France during World War II, and she was criticised for being too comfortable with the Germans but never thoroughly investigated.[4] One of Chanel's liaisons was with a German diplomat, Baron (Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage (de).[5][6] After the war ended, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator. After several years in Switzerland after the war, she returned to Paris and revived her fashion house. In 2. 01. 1, Hal Vaughan published a book on Chanel based on newly declassified documents of that era, revealing that she had collaborated with Germans in intelligence activities.

One plan in late 1. SS separate peace overture to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to end the war.[7]Early life[edit]Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in 1. Eugénie Jeanne Devolle—known as Jeanne—a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine- et- Loire, France.[8] She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, was born less than a year earlier.

Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments,[1. The family resided in rundown lodgings.

In 1. 88. 4, he married Jeanne Devolle,[1. Albert to marry her."[1. At birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as "Chasnel".

Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as "travelling".[8] With both parents absent, the infant's last name was misspelled, probably due to a clerical error. The couple had five children who survived—two boys and three girls—who lived crowded into a one- room lodging in the town of Brive- la- Gaillarde. When Gabrielle was 1. Her father sent his two sons out to work as farm laborers and sent his three daughters to the Corrèze, in central France, to the convent of Aubazine, which ran an orphanage. Its religious order, the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, was "founded to care for the poor and rejected, including running homes for abandoned and orphaned girls".[1.

It was a stark, frugal life, demanding strict discipline. Despite the tragedy of this, being placed in the orphanage may have been the best thing for Coco’s future because it is where she learned to sew. At age eighteen, Chanel, too old to remain at Aubazine, went to live in a boarding house set aside for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins. Later in her life, Chanel would retell the story of her childhood somewhat differently; she would often include more glamorous accounts, which were generally untrue. She said that when her mother died, her father sailed for America to seek his fortune, and she was sent to live with two aunts. She also claimed to have been born a decade later than 1. Personal life and early career[edit]Aspirations for a stage career[edit]Having learned the art of sewing during her six years at Aubazine, Chanel was able to find employment as a seamstress.[citation needed] When not plying her needle, she sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers.

Chanel made her stage debut singing at a café- concert (a popular entertainment venue of the era) in a Moulins pavilion, "La Rotonde". She was among other girls dubbed poseuses, the performers who entertained the crowd between star turns. The money earned was what they managed to accumulate when the plate was passed among the audience in appreciation of their performance. It was at this time that Gabrielle acquired the name "Coco", possibly based on two popular songs with which she became identified, "Ko Ko Ri Ko", and "Qui qu'a vu Coco", or it was an allusion to the French word for kept woman, cocotte.[1. As a café entertainer, Chanel radiated a juvenile allure that tantalized the military habitués of the cabaret.[page needed]In 1. Chanel was working in the spa resort town of Vichy.

Vichy boasted a profusion of concert halls, theatres and cafés where she hoped to achieve success as a performer. Chanel's youth and physical charms impressed those for whom she auditioned, but her singing voice was marginal and she failed to find stage work.[2.

Obliged to find employment, she took work at the "Grande Grille", where as a donneuse d'eau she was one of the females whose job was to dispense glasses of the purportedly curative mineral water for which Vichy was renowned.[2. When the Vichy season ended, Chanel returned to Moulins, and her former haunt "La Rotonde". She now realised that a serious stage career was not in her future.[2. Balsan and Capel[edit]. Caricature of Chanel and Arthur "Boy" Capel by Sem, 1. At Moulins, Chanel met the young French ex- cavalry officer and the wealthy textile heir Étienne Balsan. Watch Sivaji Online Etonline.

At the age of twenty- three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesanÉmilienne d’Alençon as his new favorite.[2. For the next three years, she lived with him in his château Royallieu near Compiègne, an area known for its wooded equestrian paths and the hunting life. It was a lifestyle of self- indulgence; Balsan's wealth and leisure allowed the cultivation of a social set who reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites, with all the implied accompanying decadence; Balsan lavished Chanel with the beauties of "the rich life"—diamonds, dresses, and pearls.[citation needed] Biographer Justine Picardie, in her 2.

Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life (Harper Collins), suggests that the fashion designer's nephew, André Palasse, supposedly the only child of her sister Julia- Berthe who had committed suicide, was Chanel's child by Balsan.[full citation needed]In 1. Chanel began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel.[2. In later years, Chanel reminisced of this time in her life: "two gentlemen were outbidding for my hot little body."[2. Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed Chanel in an apartment in Paris. It is said that Capel's sartorial style influenced the conception of the Chanel look. The bottle design for Chanel No.

Capel. It is believed Chanel adapted the rectangular, beveled lines of the Charvet toiletry bottles he carried in his leather traveling case[2. Capel used; she so much admired it that she wished to reproduce it in "exquisite, expensive, delicate glass".[3. 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.[3. Watch Cross Online Free HD here. Their affair lasted nine years.

Even after Capel married an English aristocrat, Lady Diana Wyndham in 1. Chanel. He died in a car accident on 2.

December 1. 91. 9.[3. A roadside memorial at the site of Capel's accident is said to have been commissioned by Chanel.[3.