T
he legendary Parisian fashion designer
Coco Chanel was famed for her unique
sense of style and innovative designs,
which introduced a new trend for
comfortable and practical, yet eminently
elegant clothing for women. Chanel’s
insouciant style was both groundbreaking
and controversial when she came to success
in the early 20th century, with clothing that
rejected the restrictive and over-elaborate
female fashions of the day. She believed
‘simplicity’ to be ‘the keynote of all true
elegance’, and that ‘luxury must be
comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury’.
These convictions are largely attributed to
Chanel’s rebellious nature, love of active
pursuits and desire for freedom, however
a look at the designer’s personal life,
during the early stages of her career, reveals
another profound influence on her creations:
a romance with the polo player Arthur
‘Boy’ Capel, referred to by Chanel as ‘the
love of her life’.
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in
Saumur, France in 1883, into inauspicious
circumstances as the daughter of a laundress
and an itinerant salesman. Upon the death of
her mother, Chanel’s father abandoned his
five children, placing the two boys on
working farms and the three girls at
Aubazine – an orphanage run by the Sisters
of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Arriving there
aged 12, Chanel remained at Aubazine for
seven years and, while there, developed an
appreciation for austerity, and the purity of
black and white, that would later manifest in
her designs. Upon leaving Aubazine at 19,
she began working as a seamstress by day
and a singer by night at La Rotonde – a
cabaret in Moulins frequented by the Tenth
Light Horse infantryman regiment. It was
there, performing a song about a Parisian lady
who loses her dog Coco at the Trocadero
amusement park, that she acquired her
nickname ‘Coco’. It was also here that she
met her first lover and business partner, the
French aristocrat and infantryman Étienne
Balsan – a close friend of Boy Capel.
Étienne Balsan came from a wealthy
family distinguished in the textile industry.
As a boy he attended boarding school in
England, where he developed a passion for
horses and dreamed of breeding
thoroughbreds upon completion of his
military service. Chanel soon became
Étienne’s mistress and, in 1907, moved into his
Château de Royallieu located in Compiègne,
north of Paris – a pedigree location for
thoroughbred breeding – where she pursued
equestrian sports and was ensconced in the
chic thoroughbred-racing world of
Longchamp. In 1908, after expressing her
desire to become financially independent by
selling her millinery designs to the society
ladies, Étienne offered Chanel his bachelor
apartment in Paris to use as a studio and, in
1910, financed her first millinery boutique at
21 Rue Cambon, helping to establish her
independent reputation.
By this point, though, Chanel and Balsan
were friends rather than lovers as Chanel
had already begun an affair with Balsan’s
friend, the English aristocrat, and
accomplished polo player Boy Capel. The pair
had met during a fox hunting trip together
with Balsan in the Pyrenees region a few years
before and Chanel soon after began to
accompany Capel to polo matches at both the
Paris and Deauville Polo Clubs. Before long
the pair fell deeply in love, to the dismay of
Balsan who nevertheless remained a loyal
friend to Chanel for the rest of his life.
While on holiday with Capel in Deauville
on the Normandy coast – a chic seaside
resort, and the epicenter of thoroughbred
racing during the Belle Époque era –
Chanel could not find comfortable clothing
to suit her needs and resorted to fashioning
outfits from the garments she discovered in
Capel’s wardrobe, such as a dress she made
from an old jersey of his. Her self-styled
creations – made from Capel’s sartorial polo
clothing, feminised with her impeccable
touch – caused a sensation among other
women, who kept asking where her outfits
were from, inspiring her now iconic designs
and encouraging her expansion from
millinery into clothing.
The heir to a coal and shipping fortune,
Capel also helped to finance Chanel’s early
business initiatives, funding a boutique in
Deauville where she launched her first
women’s clothing collection in 1913. The
sportswear-inspired garments were created
from unconventional fabrics such as polo
jerseys, knits and flannels, and featured
feminised striped and marinière sailing
shirts, loose pants, sweaters and collarless
blazers – offering her clientele an alternative
to prominent couture designers of the time,
such as Lanvin, Doucet, and Poiret.
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