The beginnings of Chanel's fashion brand lie in the French seaside resorts. In 1912 Coco-then
still Gabrielle-Chanel opened her first boutique in Deauville shops in Biarritz Monte Carlo
and Cannes soon followed. There her simple sporty designs met with a cosmopolitan clientele
who carried her fashion back to the capital Paris. In the 1920s the Chanel brand thus
experienced its first heyday driven by the artistic and social upheaval of those years the
Roaring Twenties. This lavishly illustrated catalogue documents in drawings and photographs the
extraordinary productivity of the designer who maintained friendships with artists such as Jean
Cocteau Pablo Picasso and others. In the 1920s Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes were
performing on the Riviera. The book reveals the Slavic influence in Chanel's creations
highlighting a network of correspondences with female artists close to Diaghilev's circle such
as Natalia Goncharova and Sonia Delaunay. The book also features La Pausa Gabrielle Chanel's
dream villa built in 1929 near Monaco. GABRIELLE CHANEL erased all traces of her childhood. The
only known fact is that she was born in Saumur (France) on August 19 1883. In 1910 she opened
a hat store in Paris which was followed by boutiques in Deauville Biarritz Cannes and
Monte-Carlo. Her line of jersey sportswear for women revolutionized fashion and liberated the
female body.
