The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post- World War I era with popularising a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the most influential people of the 20th century.
Her signature scent, Chanel No. Her couture house closed in , with the outbreak of World War II. Chanel stayed in France during the Nazi German occupation and collaborated with the occupiers and the Vichy puppet regime. Declassified documents revealed that she had collaborated directly with the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst.
One plan in late was for her to carry an SS peace overture to Churchill to end the war. The family resided in run-down lodgings. In , he married Jeanne Devolle, persuaded to legitimate his children by her family who had "united, effectively, to pay Albert". At birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as "Chasnel". Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as "traveling".
She went to her grave as Gabrielle Chasnel because to correct, legally, the misspelled name on her birth certificate would reveal that she was born in a poor house hospice. When Gabrielle was 11, [ 4 ] [ 14 ] Jeanne died at the age of Its religious order, the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, was "founded to care for the poor and rejected, including running homes for abandoned and orphaned girls". Placement in the orphanage may have contributed to Chanel's future career, as it was where she learned to sew.
At age eighteen, Chanel, too old to remain at Aubazine, went to live in a boarding house for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins. Later in life, Chanel would retell the story of her childhood somewhat differently; she would often include more glamorous accounts, which were generally untrue.
