"Coco Before Chanel"....

I saw a wonderful film tonight, "Coco Avant Chanel" (translated as "Coco Before Chanel").....starring Audrey Tautou, the film is about Coco Chanel's life up until she finds success as a seamstress and designer.

It was a beautiful and very moving film, visually stunning with marvellous costumes and wonderful acting from the gorgeous Audrey Tautou as Coco and also from Alessandro Nivola as Arthur "Boy" Capel, her lover and the love of her life.

I was so surprised though by how little I knew about Chanel, her background wasn't at all what I had thought it would be.....I had assumed that she came from money and also that she was married and had a family. I had no idea that actually she was born in the poorhouse and never married. Her mother died when Coco was 12 and her father was forced to leave his children at an orphanage to find work.....Coco remained there until she was 18.

Chanel must felt the stigma of such humble beginnings and later would give various different versions of her childhood....understandable I suppose since social standing was everything at the time.

What really came through in the film was her really strong sense of self and pride ....she fell in love with "Boy" and even when he married (into money) she remained his mistress for some years until he was killed in a car accident.....said to be the single most devastating event of her life. She had always said though that she would never marry and her desire to work, in spite of the chance of being "looked after" by various rich playboy boyfriends, was clearly what inspired her to move to Paris, to design and to be successful.

The support and patronage of rich and titled clients in Paris and England enabled her to set up several stores...women loved her unique attitude towards fashion and her focus on the woman inside her clothes.

She kept an apartment above her store at 31 rue Cambon, Paris but for over 30 years she lived on and off at the Hotel Ritz Paris.....can you imagine?! During the Second World War, she closed her stores stating that no one would be interested in fashion and she remained at the Ritz thanks partly to her alleged affair with a German officer and Nazi spy. The French never forgot this and when she returned to Paris later in the 1950's after some years living in Switzerland, it was the British and Americans who became the biggest fans of her fashions and not the French who could not forgive what they saw as betrayal.

I am sure she had many marriage proposals and her love life was subject to continual speculation.....I wonder what made her so focused and so forward-thinking in her attitude towards women and fashion....and what made her so independent and strong. She designed clothes that were comfortable, simple, revealing and had staying power.....they were clothes free of corsets and undergarments as had always been the case up til then....she claimed she gave women back their bodies and their freedom. Coco Chanel was the only haute couture designer to be named in Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century, an astonishing achievement for a girl of her background.

A fascinating life, I think you would agree. I was totally swept up in the film....I love it when that happens at the cinema....you must go and see it....

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous"....

....my favourite photo of Coco Chanel....

"Fashion fades, only style remains the same...."

"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different...."
The straw hats which were the first fashion items she made and the quintessential Chanel quilted handbag...


"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening...."


"Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress...."

"Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty...."


A photo of the faceted mirrored spiral staircase that Chanel designed. It connected all four levels of her apartment and made it possible for her to stand in one spot and see what was happening on every floor....

The Chanel advertising campaigns are legendary now....the latest one stars Audrey Tautou but this one starring Nicole Kidman lasted 180 seconds and apparently cost $42 million to make....


"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud...."


"There are people who have money and people who are rich...."

"Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable...."

"A woman has the age she deserves..."

One of the rooms which formed part of her suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris.....

Born Gabrielle Chanel, she was given the nickname "Coco" when she was about 18.....working at tailor's in the day and as a singer with her sister at night....

"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance...."

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, 1883-1971