When Chanel was 12, she lost her mother to bronchitis and her father put Chanel and other daughters to the convent of Aubazine in Central France. Chanel had a tough time in Aubazine, as it was a demanding place, and thus she fled from there to boarding house for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins.

Chanel was born on 19 August 1883 to an unwed mother Eugenie Jeanne Devolle. She did not have a great childhood and grew up with poverty surrounding her. Her mother Eugenie Jeanne Devolle was a laundry woman in the Charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence in Saumur, France.

Career

Although Chanel did not have a pleasant stay at Aubazine, it did do a little good to her eventually. She did a lot of sewing sewing in the six years that she stayed in Aubazine which earned her a job as a seamstress.

In her free time, she used to sing in cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. During this time she made her stage debut singing at a cafe concert in a Moulins pavilion, La Rotonde and she acquired the name ‘Coco’, because of the two songs she sang 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.

In 1906, she went to the spa resort town of Vichy and tried her best to become a stage performer but soon realized that a stage career was not her cup of tea and thus she returned to Moulins.

It was Captain Arthur Edward Capel, her love affair, who was instrumental in helping Chanel set-up her first shop. Capel, himself being a well-dressed man influenced the conception of the Chanel look.

The design of Chanel’s signature scent ‘Chanel 5’ drew inspiration from knick-knacks carried by Capel. It was either the rectangular, bevelled lines of the Charvet toiletry bottles Capel carried in his leather traveling case or the exquisite design of the whiskey decanter.

In 1913, Chanel with the help of Arthur Capel, who financed her, opened a boutique in Deauville. She introduced a range of casual clothes and sportswear. The boutique at Deauville became quite successful.

Inspired by this, she opened one such boutique in Biaritzz, in 1915. Subsequently Biaritzz did very well for Chanel.

By 1919, she was registered as a couturiere and established her maison de couture at 31 rue Cambon. She had the whole building of 31 rue Cambon in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris.

With time Chanel's business empire flourished and by 1935 she employed four thousand people. But during the late 1930s her business began to dip. other designers such as, Elsa Schiaparelli began to make their mark and the beginning of World War II, forced Chanel to close her shops.

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