WORLD OF COCO CHANEL, THE: FRIENDS, FASHION, FAME

Gabrielle Coco Chanel is an icon of fashion, and can lay claim to having invented the look of the 20th century. Her life and accomplishment constitute one of the great stories of the modern age. She stripped women of their corsets and feathers, bobbed their hair, put them in bathing suits and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced the little black dress; trousers for women; costume jewelry; the exquisitely comfortable suit that became her trademark. Early in the Roaring Twenties, Chanel made the first ever couture perfume - No. 5 - presenting it in the famous little square-cut flagon that, inspired by Picasso and Cubism, became the arch symbol of the Art Deco style. No. 5 remains the most popular scent ever created, making Chanel rich beyond belief and providing the foundation of a worldwide empire. Chanel went everywhere and knew everyone as this sumptuously-illustrated book clearly shows. This was the era of Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Visconti - all of whom ‘Coco’ knew and collaborated with, creating a whole new concept of elegance. The more than 400 illustrations are from an extraordinary collection amassed over the years by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel’s offcial biographer and close friend. An authoritative and practised writer, Charles-Roux has used painstaking research and vivid eyewitness accounts to set the pictures in their context of time and place. She makes Chanel live again!