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Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel ( shə-NEL, French: [ɡabʁijɛl bɔnœʁ kɔko ʃanɛl] ; 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 popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. This replaced the "corseted silhouette" that had earlier been dominant with a style that was simpler, far less time-consuming to put on and remove, more comfortable, and less expensive, all without sacrificing elegance. 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, realizing her aesthetic design in 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 and was criticized during the war for collaborating with the Nazi-German occupiers and the Vichy puppet regime to free her nephew from a prisoner of war camp. To secure his release Chanel began a liaison with a German diplomat/spy she had known before the war, Baron (Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage. And following her nephew's release, she collaborated in minor ways. After 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, returning to Paris in 1954 to revive her fashion house. In 2011, Hal Vaughan published a biography about Chanel based on newly declassified documents, revealing 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. 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.: 14  She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, had been born less than a year earlier. Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments,: 27  living a nomadic life, traveling 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".: 16  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 "traveling".: 16  She went to her grave as Gabrielle Chasnel because to correct, legally, the misspelled name on her birth certificate would reveal that she was born in a poor house hospice. The couple had six children—Julia, Gabrielle, Alphonse (the first boy, born 1885), Antoinette (born 1887), Lucien, and Augustin (who died at six months)—and lived crowded into a one-room lodging in the town of Brive-la-Gaillarde. When Gabrielle was 11, Jeanne died at the age of 32.: 18  The children did not attend school. Her father sent his two sons to work as farm laborers and sent his three daughters 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".: 27  It was a stark, frugal life, demanding strict discipline. Placement in the orphanage may have contributed to Chanel's future career, as it was where she learned to sew. At age eighteen, Chanel, too old to remain at Aubazine, went to live in a boarding house for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins.: 5  Later in 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 1883 and that her mother had died when she was much younger than 11. Personal life and early career 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 they managed to accumulate 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 tantalized the military habitués of the cabaret. In 1906, Chanel worked 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.: 49  Obliged to find employment, she took work at the Grande Grille, where as a donneuse d'eau she was one whose job was to dispense glasses of the purportedly curative mineral water for which Vichy was renowned.: 45  When the Vichy season ended, Chanel returned to Moulins, and her former haunt La Rotonde. She realized then that a serious stage career was not in her future.: 52  Balsan and Capel At Moulins, Chanel met a young French ex-cavalry officer and textile heir, Étienne Balsan. At the age of twenty-three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d'Alençon as his new favourite.: 10  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.: 5–6  It was a lifestyle of self-indulgence. Balsan's wealth allowed the cultivation of a social set that reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites, with all the implied accompanying decadence. Balsan showered Chanel with the baubles of "the rich life"—diamonds, dresses, and pearls. Biographer Justine Picardie, in her 2010 study Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, suggests that the fashion designer's nephew, André Palasse, supposedly the only child of her sister Julia-Berthe who.... Discover the Coco Simon popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Coco Simon books.