Chanel - Hardcover

Charles-Roux Ma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860460569 ISBN 13: 9781860460562

Publisher: The Harvill Press, 1989

Synopsis

Coco Chanel was a legend who revolutionised the way women looked. She became the single most important arbiter of fashion and taste in the 20th century. Just her name was sufficient to convey prestige, quality and unmistakable style. The Duke of Westminster wooed her, Stravinsky played for her and Goldwyn enticed her to Hollywood. She knew everybody who was anybody in the world of the arts from Picasso and Cocteau to Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman. She designed frankly fake jewellery, introduced the basic little black dress and perfumed the world with her No. 5. However, as this remarkable biography shows, there was a mass of contradictions behind the myth of Mademoiselle . Chanel follows her story from her upbringing in provincial Auvergne through her first successes in the 1920s to her comeback in the 1950s and 1960s. Edmond Charles-Roux s book is definitive as history and immensely entertaining as gossip.

About this title

Review

'This biography delves far into the past, unraveling the mysteries that Chanel herself worked to create…it's a beautifully honest yet surprisingly unforgiving portrait of a woman often outshone by her own legend' Observer.

'A fascinating, intimate, merciless, but ultimately sympathetic portrait… Even for those with only the slightest interest in fashion this is a beautifully written, highly entertaining biography' Guardian.

'Chanel's life was extraordinary, varied, full, perverse and like all good stories, full of dramatic reversals and successes' Margaret Drabble.

From the Back Cover

She revolutionised the way women looked. She persuaded them to throw away their corsets, shorten their skirts, bob their hair, and scent their world with Chanel No. 5. Shrewd and secretive, intelligent and independent, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel was to become an icon. But how closely did her carefully moulded image match the truth? Born in a poorhouse, raised in an orphanage - not by the two aunts that she herself invented - she fought from a young age to escape obscurity. Developing a love of luxury and a sense of fashion as a wealthy man's mistress, she rose from back-street milliner to become the head of a vast business empire, where she socialised with Picasso, Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau. Charles-Roux also reveals one of Chanel's best kept secrets - her love affair with a wartime spy. Chanel's legend did not fade with her death, and nor has the mark of sheer elegance that she left upon the world of fashion. This is an unmatchable portrait of the living woman behind the vibrant legend.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Harvill Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1860460569
• ISBN 13: 9781860460562
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464