Free Rein

The first new fragrance from Chanel in 15 years is a shout-out to strong-willed women everywhere, and a tribute to the house’s eponymous founder, who remains a poster girl of feminine empowerment. Goh Yee Huay discovers more in Paris.

Ask anyone what Chanel’s first name is and there’s a good chance the reflexive answer would be “Coco”. Not many automatically recall the name given to her at birth: Gabrielle.

The greater prominence of her nickname reflects how Chanel’s glamorous public persona and fashion milestones have captured the limelight . But for a woman who created so many sartorial icons – the little black dress, the tweed jacket, the 2.55 bag, just to name a few – the real Chanel remains something of a mystery.

The daughter of a washerwoman and a travelling street vendor, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel’s mother died when she was 12. Unable to care for his five children, her father sent Chanel and her two sisters to a convent home for abandoned and orphaned girls. There, she learnt to sew.

After leaving the convent at 18, she worked as a seamstress while moonlighting as a singer in a club. During this period, she acquired the nickname “Coco”, most likely based on two popular songs she often sang. A few years later, she met the rich textile heir, Etienne Balsan, and at 23, became his mistress.

Other prominent lovers followed over the next two decades, many of them members of the European aristocracy. They included Arthur Edward “Boy” Capel, whom Chanel called the love of her life and whose early death from a car accident she never got over; Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a first cousin of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II; and the fabulously rich Duke of Westminster. It was even alleged that she had a brief romance with the then Prince of Wales, who would later be crowned Edward VIII.