CHANEL, GABRIELLE

born Aug. 19, 1883, Saumur, Fr. died Jan. 10, 1971, Paris Gabrielle Coco Chanel. byname Coco French dress designer who ruled over Parisian haute couture for almost six decades. Her elegantly casual designs inspired women of fashion to abandon complicated, uncomfortable clothes and to adopt her now-classic innovationsi.e., jersey dresses and suits, bell-bottom trousers, bobbed hair, trench coats, turtleneck sweaters, costume jewelry, and the little black dress. Born in the French countryside, Chanel was orphaned at the age of six. Little is known about the rest of her early life. In 1913 she opened a tiny millinery shop in Deauville, Fr. She quickly added sweaters, skirts, and accessories to the shop. Within five years her original use of jersey fabric to create a poor girl look had attracted the attention of influential wealthy women seeking relief from prevalent corseted styles. Her nonconformist designs stressing simplicity and comfort revolutionized the fashion industry for the next 30 years. At the height of her career, the Chanel industries employed 3,500 people and included a fashion house, a textile business, perfume laboratories, and a workshop for costume jewelry. The financial basis of this empire was Chanel No. 5, the phenomenally successful perfume introduced in 1922. Chanel retired in 1938 but returned in 1954 to introduce her highly copied suit design: a collarless, braid-trimmed cardigan jacket with a graceful skirt. Chanel never married, but her liaisons with the wealthy and famous earned her notoriety in the social and artistic circles of Paris.