Coco amasses great wealth and makes friends among the artistic elite of France, including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Serge Diaghilev. Departing from belle epoque corsets and bustles, Chanel’s first designs, separates based on menswear with a neutral palette and a slim silhouette, catch on almost immediately with rich women in Paris, Deauville, Biarritz and beyond. With his help, she opens a Paris atelier. At a race track, she meets Arthur Capel, aka “Boy,” who will prove to be the love of her life. A wealthy lover, Balsan, launches her career in fashion: She designs hats for his friends, courtesans from the Paris demimonde. Chanel soon tires of slaving in a shop and seeks her fortune as a cafe chanteuse with the stage name Coco. Eventually, an aunt offers the Chanel sisters a home, where they help with the family millinery business. Gabrielle Chanel came from humble beginnings: Her father, a peddler, abandoned his two sons and three daughters after their mother died, and she and her sisters were taken in by nuns. An admiring portrait of the designer who first modernized women’s wear, told in the first person as she looks back over her life.
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