: 16 With both parents absent, the infant's last name was misspelled, probably due to a clerical error. Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as 'traveling'. : 16Īt birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as 'Chasnel'. In 1884, he married Jeanne Devolle, : 16 persuaded to do so by her family who had 'united, effectively, to pay Albert'. Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments, : 27 living a nomadic life, traveling to and from market towns.

: 14 She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel the first, Julia, had been born less than a year earlier. 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. One plan in late 1943 was for her to carry an SS peace overture to Churchill to end the war.

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. When the war ended, Chanel moved to Switzerland, returning to Paris in 1954 to revive her fashion house. After the war, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator due to intervention by British prime minister Winston Churchill. One of Chanel's liaisons was with a German diplomat, Baron ( Freiherr) Hans Günther von Dincklage. Chanel stayed in France and was criticized during the war for collaborating with the Nazi-German occupiers and the Vichy puppet regime to boost her professional career. Her couture house closed in 1939, with the outbreak of World War II. 5, has become an iconic product, and Chanel herself designed her famed interlocked-CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing, realizing her aesthetic design in jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. This replaced the ' corseted silhouette' that was dominant beforehand with a style that was simpler, far less time consuming to put on and remove, more comfortable, and less expensive, all without sacrificing elegance.

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. Gabrielle Bonheur ' Coco' Chanel ( / ʃ ə ˈ n ɛ l/ shə- NEL, French: ( listen) 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman.

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