- Her perfume, Chanel No. 5, is the first perfume to be a blend of many floral scents, rather than smelling like a single type of flower.
- Declared that Katharine Hepburn (at 60) was "too old" to play her in the Broadway musical Coco.
- Took on the nickname Coco after her 1905 performance of the song, "Qui qu'a vu Coco dans le Trocadero" for a crowd of uniformed admirers at La Rotande, a music hall in a small, provincial town.
- Learned to sew while attending a convent school.
- She sprayed all of her atelier fitting rooms with Chanel No. 5.
- Popularized the sun-tanned look in the 1920s after appearing on her vacation yacht with a sun tan. Prior to that, porcelain white skin was popular, because it was believed that only people of lower class worked in the sun and were therefore tan.
- Worked for Sergei Diaghilev in 1924-1928 as costume designer for his "Russian Seasons" in collaboration with Pablo Picasso.
- Her mother died of tuberculosis.
- After their mother's death, Coco and her sister went to live at a local orphanage. Eventually the girls were claimed by their aunts.
- She was the second daughter of Henri-Albert Chanel and Eugénie Jeanne Dévolles. She was born out of wedlock until her parents married on November 17, 1884. In marrying Jeanne, Albert legalized his paternity, and Coco and her sister Julia's names were recorded in the "livret de famille," the handbook issued to every couple for registration of births and deaths.
- Her older sister Julia was born on September 11, 1882.
- Her birth certificate is misleading - her father's surname and hers were misspelt due to a clerical error as "Chasnel". Her father's surname on his own birth certificate had also been misspelt as "Charnet". The mistake on his birth certificate was not corrected in official records until 1878 when a court decree stated that Charnet be replaced on the certificate by Chanel, which is the true name.
- Famous writer Françoise Sagan said on French TV, that Coco Chanel was fiercely antisemitic: "I liked her work, but I didn't like her at all. I found her disgusting, nasty, cruel, antisemitic. I had dinner with her twice. Each time I left early...because of her offensive antisemitic opinions. I didn't like that. We were pretty much at odds." [from Les guerres de Coco Chanel (2019), translated].
- Loved camellias.
- She retired in 1938 and made a successful comeback in 1954.
- [1933] Engaged to Paul Iribe.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content