CoCo Chanel

Not so little, black dress

By Lila

  

Coco Chanel was an inspiration to women in the 1800’s, 1900’s, and even after she passed in the 2000’s. She was a powerful businessperson and a beautiful lady. She proved that you can be both and more.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was born to Jeanne Chanel in 1883. Her father was Albert Chanel. At birth Coco was incorrectly registered as “Gabrielle Chasnel.” She never attended school and neither did her siblings, Julia, Alphonse, Antoinette, Lucien, and Augustin.

She learned to sew from her mother and found her first job as a seamstress. She spent her free time singing cabaret in cafes. Her nickname Coco came from a song she often sang “Who Has Seen Coco?”. In 1906 she worked at a spa resort where she tried to get a more serious stage career but failed.

In 1919 she opened a hat shop and became extremely popular as a designer. It was said that “any woman without one of her items is a hopeless wreck.” She also started a line of perfumes and named them after herself. She also made clothes, her most famous one being, the “little black dress.”

In 1939 at the beginning of World War II Chanel closed all her shops, stating, “it's not a time for fashion.” As a result, 4,000 women lost their jobs. Her biographer Hal Vaughan suggested that, “Chanel used the outbreak of war as an opportunity to retaliate against those workers who had struck for higher wages and shorter work hours in the French genral labor strike of 1936.”

As 1971 began, Chanel was 87 years old. She carried out her usual routine of preparing the spring catalogue. She had gone for a long drive on the afternoon of Saturday, 9 January. Soon after, feeling ill, she went to bed early. She announced her final words to her maid which were: "You see, this is how you die.”

She died on Sunday, 10 January 1971, at the Hotel Ritz, where she had lived for more than 30 years.

In conclusion Coco proves that beautiful is not the limit for women, she proves the sky is the limit if you work hard.