NATIONAL BESTSELLER Certain lives are at once so exceptional and yet so in step with their
historical moments that they illuminate cultural forces far beyond the scope of a single
person. Such is the case with Coco Chanel whose life offers one of the most fascinating tales
of the twentieth century-throwing into dramatic relief an era of war fashion ardent
nationalism and earth-shaking change-here brilliantly treated for the first time with
wide-ranging and incisive historical scrutiny. Coco Chanel transformed forever the way women
dressed. Her influence remains so pervasive that to this day we can see her afterimage a dozen
times while just walking down a single street: in all the little black dresses flat shoes
costume jewelry cardigan sweaters and tortoiseshell eyeglasses on women of every age and
background. A bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume is sold every three seconds. Arguably no other
individual has had a deeper impact on the visual aesthetic of the world. But how did a poor
orphan become a global icon of both luxury and everyday style? How did she develop such vast
undying influence? And what does our ongoing love of all things Chanel tell us about ourselves?
These are the mysteries that Rhonda K. Garelick unravels in Mademoiselle. Raised in rural
poverty and orphaned early the young Chanel supported herself as best she could. Then as an
uneducated nineteen-year-old café singer she attracted the attention of a wealthy and powerful
admirer and parlayed his support into her own hat design business. For the rest of Chanel's
life the professional personal and political were interwoven her lovers included diplomat
Boy Capel composer Igor Stravinsky Romanov heir Grand Duke Dmitri Hugh Grosvenor the Duke
of Westminster poet Pierre Reverdy a Nazi officer and several women as well. For all that
she was profoundly alone her romantic life relentlessly plagued by abandonment and tragedy.
Chanel's ambitions and accomplishments were unparalleled. Her hat shop evolved into a clothing
empire. She became a noted theatrical and film costume designer collaborating with the likes
of Pablo Picasso Jean Cocteau and Luchino Visconti. The genius of Coco Chanel Garelick shows
lay in the way she absorbed the zeitgeist reflecting it back to the world in her designs and
in what Garelick calls wearable personality-the irresistible and contagious style infused with
both world history and Chanel's nearly unbelievable life saga. By age forty Chanel had become
a multimillionaire and a household name and her Chanel Corporation is still the
highest-earning privately owned luxury goods manufacturer in the world. In Mademoiselle
Garelick delivers the most probing well-researched and insightful biography to date on this
seemingly familiar but endlessly surprising figure-a work that is truly both a heady
intellectual study and a literary page-turner. Praise for Mademoiselle A detailed wry and
nuanced portrait of a complicated woman that leaves the reader in a state of utterly satisfying
confusion-blissfully mesmerized and confounded by the reality of the human spirit.-The
Washington Post Writing an exhaustive biography of Chanel is a challenge comparable to racing a
four-horse chariot. . . . This makes the assured confidence with which Garelick tells her story
all the more remarkable.-The New York Review of Books Broadly focused and beautifully
written.-The Wall Street Journal
