19th August: Coco Chanel

Today, ten facts about Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, French fashion designer, born this date in 1883.

1. Her early life was humble. She was born to an unmarried mother, Jeanne, who was a laundrywoman, in a poorhouse in France. Her father, Albert Chanel, was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments.
2. She could have had a career on the stage. She sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. Two of her signature songs were Ko Ko Ri Ko and Qui qu'a vu Coco - which was possibly the reason Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was known as "Coco".
3. Her first success in the fashion industry was as a milliner. An actress, Gabrielle Dorziat, wore her hats and her career took off.
4. Her innovations include using jersey, a material usually reserved for men's underwear, for sport and leisure clothes for women, and the "little Black dress" when previously, black had been primarily a colour worn in mourning.
5. Coco Chanel never married, but she had numerous affairs with rich and powerful men, starting with French ex-cavalry officer and the wealthy textile heir Étienne Balsan, who introduced her to a life of luxury. Later, Chanel had an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel. It's thought the bottle design for Chanel No. 5 was based on either his toiletry bottles or his Whiskey decanter. Other affairs included Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, known to his intimates as "Bendor"; Gossip of the time suggested she had a fling with the then Prince of Wales, Edward VIII. He allegedly visited Chanel in her apartment and told her to call him "David", a privilege reserved only for his closest friends and family.
6. She was suspected of being a German spy during the second world war. She had a reference number in a French police list of possible spies, but possibly more damning was the fact she was at that time having it off with Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, and the SS came up with a plan codenamed Operation Modellhut ("Model Hat") which involved Chanel using her influence with powerful men in Britain, including Winston Churchill himself, to get information. She was interrogated, but claimed "Churchill had me freed". There is speculation that, if Chanel had been forced to testify at a trial, she might have exposed the pro-Nazi sympathies of top-level British officials, members of the society elite, and the royal family.
7. Coco Chanel made having a suntan fashionable. This wasn't intentional. She got sunburned during a cruise holiday and when she returned to Cannes, the public copied her.
8. Five was her favourite number, after being told by a fortune teller it was her lucky number. Not only was her famous perfume named "Chanel No. 5" but it was the fifth variant of the trial perfumes that were prepared, and the perfume was launched to the public on the fifth of May 1921.
9. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
10. For the last 37 years of her life, she lived in a hotel, the Ritz Hotel, Paris (which was also the hotel where many occupying Nazi officers stayed). She died there at the age of 87, and her last words were “You see, this is how you die.”