Coco Chanel Personality

“In Order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” (Brainy Quote) Coco Chanel was always the trend setter never a follower. She was known for many things like her infamous suit, the little black dress, perfume and how she built her empire off of nothing except her pure talent. In my opinion she is the most influential person to the world of fashion, especially with the child hood she had, most people would have just given up and stopped pursuing their dreams. Not only was she successful at building her own empire, she also stayed true to herself, which normally wouldn’t happen.

Coco Chanel’s real name was Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, she was born August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France. She was born to an unwed mother, Eugénie "Jeanne" Devolle, a laundrywoman, and her father, Albert Chanel, was a street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments (Wikipedia). Coco was the 2nd daughter out of five, she had two brothers and 2 other sisters. When she was 12 years old her mother died of Bronchitis, soon after that her father sent her and her two sisters to central France, to the convent of Aubazine, where she was taught to sew. School vacations were also spent with relatives in the provincial capital of Moulins where Gabrielle learnt to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery had been able to teach her.

When Gabrielle was eighteen she was too old to stay at the convent so she moved to the town of Moulins and worked as a tailor. When she wasn’t working as a tailor Chanel made her stage debut singing cabaret at "La Rotonde". It was there she earned the name “Coco”, it’s said she was given the name based on two popular songs with which she would sing, "Ko Ko Ri Ko", and "Qui qu'a vu Coco". At the age of 20 Coco Cha...

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...he time she was alive but she did it anyway. In a way Chanel took the reins from the men who had been controlling the fashion industry and ran with them. Not only did she revolutionized woman’s clothing she also had a handbag line, jewelry line, a perfume line and even influenced being tan.

I think that without Chanel’s designs and risk taking in general, women as a hole would be wearing similar things to the Victorian era, instead of things such as yoga pants and a t-shirts. Even if we were wearing things that were similar to the Victorian era we still wouldn’t have the handbags, the perfume, or the jewelry she created because I think that designers always have that one person they look up too and for most of them I think it would be Coco Chanel. Whether or not they realize it they would be using Chanel as a motivation to be better or inspiration to be like Chanel.