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Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (August 19, 1883 - January 10, 1971) was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure in the history of 20th-century fashion. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century. She was born the second illegitimate daughter of traveling salesman Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle in the small city of Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. There was a mis-spelling on her birth certificate that was recorded her surname as 'Chasnel', making the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence. Coco was born in a poorhouse. Her birth was recorded the following day. Two employees of the hospice went to city hall and declared the child of feminine gender. The hospice employees were illiterate so when the mayor François Poitu wrote down the birth, no one knew how to spell Chanel so the mayor improvised and recorded it with an "s", making it Chasnel. Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882-1913) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old, Chanel's mother died; her father left the family a short time later. The young Chanel spent seven years in the orphanage of the Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital of Moulins, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate. When Coco turned eighteen, she left the orphanage, and took up work for a local tailor. It was at the tailor shop where she met and soon began an affair with the English playboy Étienne Balsan. While living with Balsan, Coco began designing hats as a hobby. The hats immediately caught the attention of the female Parisian élite, and provided Coco with a path toward earning financial independence for herself. With the aid of Balsan and another rich lover Arthur "Boy" Capel (d. 21 December 1919 in a motor accident), Coco was able to acquire the property and financial backing to open her own millinery shop, in 1909, called ‘Chanel Modes’, at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. Her hats were worn by celebrated French actresses, which helped to establish her reputation. Chanel introduced in 1913 women’s sportswear at her new boutique in Deauville, France, in the Rue Gounaut-Biron; Marthe, Countess de Gounaut-Biron, (daughter of American diplomat John George Alexander Leishman) was Chanel's first aristocratic client. Later in life, Coco Chanel concocted an elaborate false history for her humble beginnings. She would steadfastly claim that when her mother died, her father sailed for America and she was sent to live with two cold-hearted spinster aunts. She even claimed to have been born in 1893 as opposed to 1883, and that her mother had died when Coco was 6, instead of twelve. She never married. All this was done in order to diminish the stigma that poverty and orphanhood bestowed upon unfortunates in nineteenth century France.
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