Coco Chanel
1883 – 1971 · France
Known for: Liberated women from the corset; built fashion's most enduring house
“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
Biography
Orphaned into a convent at eleven, Gabrielle Chanel learned to sew among nuns and reinvented herself completely, the name, the past, the rules. She threw out the corset and dressed women in jersey, trousers, the little black dress and the tweed suit: clothes to live in, not to be decorative in. Fashion, she said, fades; only style remains.
Chanel No. 5, created in 1921, became the most famous perfume on Earth. Her comeback at 70, mocked in Paris and embraced in America, sealed the legend. She ran her empire from the Ritz until the end, proof, in her own words, that "my life didn't please me, so I created my life."