Chanel and Her World: Friends, Fashion, and Fame

The best-selling, most abundantly illustrated biography available of fashion icon Coco Chanel, written by Edmonde Charles-Roux, her close friend and chosen official biographer. A model pictorial biography. --New York Times Gabrielle Coco Chanel (1883-1971) is a fashion icon unlike any other, arguably the most influential designer of the 20th century, whose creations remain as popular today as when they were introduced a century ago. She invented modern, chic clothing for women: she freed them from corsets, bobbed their hair, put them in simple bathing suits, and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced slacks, costume jewelry, the exquisitely comfortable and elegant knit suit, the little black dress, and the now-ubiquitous quilted handbag. She made the first couture perfume―No. 5―which remains the most popular scent ever created. And she knew and collaborated with the leading creative minds of her day: the likes of Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Jean Renoir, and Visconti―as she matched their modernist innovations by liberating women from the prison of 19th-century fashion and introducing a whole new concept of style. In this beautiful volume, the glorious life and world of the incomparable Coco Chanel shines again through lively text and a staggering collection of photographs amassed by author Edmonde Charles-Roux--the dear friend whom Chanel chose as her biographer--shedding new light on one of the great stories of the modern age. This Chanel biography is as elegantly turned out as its subject. --The Washington Post