Despite an incredibly challenging childhood, Coco Chanel revolutionized women's fashion. The episode delves into her humble beginnings, her rise to fame, her relationships, the launch of her fashion empire, and of course, the strategies she used to accomplish it all. 00:00 Introduction to Coco Chanel 01:45 Coco Chanel's Humble Beginnings 03:17 The Power of Self-Creation 07:40 Coco's Early Career and Rise 12:21 The Birth of Chanel's Fashion Empire 22:10 Chanel No. 5: A Perfume Revolution 25:50 The Little Black Dress and Beyond 30:07 Coco Chanel and Great Leadership 31:46 Coco Chanel's Rise in the Fashion Industry 32:29 World War II and Controversial Allegiances 39:11 Post-War Challenges and Strategic Moves 43:59 Chanel's Comeback and Fashion Philosophy 47:44 Final Years and Legacy 48:52 Key Takeaways from Coco Chanel's Life 59:44 Closing Remarks --- HTTOTW Premium - Sign up to get all endnotes and special episodes Gains In Bulk - Use this link and use code Ben for 20% off VanMan - Use code TakeOver10 for 10% off Founders Podcast Speechify.com - Use code Ben for 15% off
Chapter 1: What are Coco Chanel's humble beginnings?
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This despite growing up in the worst circumstances ever. potentially that I've ever read about in one of these figures. She came from no money, no wealth, no connected influential family at all. It's genuinely an amazing story. So let's get into it. This is The Life of Coco Chanel. If you want to take over the world, it helps to look the part. And so you, my dear listener, need to be in the gym.
Chapter 2: How did Coco Chanel create her own identity?
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There are a dozen versions of Coco Chanel's childhood, but let's start with the true one. Her father was a wandering salesman, a peddler. He and Coco's mother were not married when she was born. He was a Rolling Stone. He would come home just long enough to impregnate Coco's mother and then leave again.
They had six children together, and Coco's mother and father actually got married shortly after she was born. So she was born Gabrielle Chanel, and she was born in a poor house in southern France. She was named Gabrielle because apparently that was the name of the nun who helped deliver her. Coco is a nickname that she would be given later in life. Her mother died when Coco was 11.
And she went to live in an orphanage along with her sister. The orphanage was divided between those whose parents supported them, gave a little bit of money to the orphanage, and those who did not. And since her father was nowhere to be found, he had emigrated to America to start a new life at this point, she was one of those who was not supported.
So she's like kind of in the lower half of the orphanage. So she's literally from like the lowest of the low. She's an illegitimate orphan from a lower class family in the neglected wing of the orphanage. You really can't grow up poorer than that, at least not in France at this time. And this is the late 1800s. Chanel is born in 1883. So she has this incredibly rough upbringing.
She doesn't go to a proper school, although, of course, she does learn the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics. And, as fate would have it, she learns to sew at this orphanage. Now, it's important to note that she would relentlessly and shamelessly lie about all of this for her entire life. She would lie about almost every aspect of her childhood.
She concocted an entirely different childhood for herself. She lied about her father, saying that he visited her. She would lie about the orphanage, saying that she was raised by her aunts. She would lie about her age, adjusting it as necessary to meet the circumstances.
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Chapter 3: What led to the birth of Chanel's fashion empire?
At first, she would say she was just a few years younger than she truly was, and eventually, she ended up reducing her age by a full decade. She would lie about where she was born and why, saying that the only reason she wasn't born at home is that her mother was taking a trip via train.
Her lies were brazen, they were easily contradicted by the facts, and they frequently conflicted with one another. And she occasionally acknowledged the untruthfulness of what she said about her childhood. She just didn't care. She was making it all up.
Like to her, the most important thing was the story that she was creating, not the truthfulness of it or whether everyone knew about the truthfulness of it. There's a phrase used to describe something about Steve Jobs, something he did. It's called his reality distortion field.
He could just seemingly create new realities out of thin air when he was talking or when he was creating products, whatever. Coco had that also. She had a powerful reality distortion field in every aspect of her life. She had unbelievable confidence in herself, just this unbelievable self-belief, and she loved to have control. She needed control. She craved it.
As one might imagine, right, from a childhood that was so traumatic and so out of her control that created in her a great craving to be able to control every aspect of her life. Karen Carbo in her biography has a great line. She says she had no respect for anything she didn't create, and that included her own history. And I think that's a good way to understand it. And so, yeah, she did.
She wanted to create everything in her life. And so she just created a childhood for herself, one in which she was raised by her aunts. Her father was loving and visited her all the time. She was her father's favorite. She was young, precocious, rode horses all the time. Like she had this sort of idyllic childhood that she created for herself.
She needed this to kind of operate on a day-to-day basis, this sort of self-creation myth that she had. There's a very good quote I like from the Justine Picardy biography of Coco Chanel. She writes, and this is quoting at first from Chanel, "'I don't like the family,' she told DeLay in one of a series of revelatory rambling conversations in her final decade. "'You're born into it, not of it.
I don't know anything more terrifying than the family.'" And so she circled around and about it, telling and retelling the narrative of her youth, remaking history just as she remade the sleeves of a jacket, unfastening its seams and cutting its threads, and then sewing it back together again. Childhood. You speak of it when you're very tired, because it's a time when you had hopes, expectations.
I remember my childhood by heart. Okay, so that was one of Coco's superpowers, her ability to just create reality out of whole cloth, create reality distortion fields, and get people to really believe it and buy it. Her willingness to lie about her childhood is maybe just like a seemingly small example of it.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of Chanel No. 5?
Walter Isaacson writes about Steve Jobs. He says, when Jobs did not want to deal with a distraction, he sometimes just ignored it as if he could will it out of existence. And that is exactly what Coco does. Again, I know right now we're just talking about lying about her childhood, but obviously this would serve as a crucial skill in her career.
And actually we see it right away because when she gets kicked out of her convent orphanage at age 18, she goes and she works as an entertaining girl. Like basically she goes and works in this kind of resort town where there are all these bars and she's like a barmaid. She sings a little bit. She entertains the men. She talks with them. She does a little serving. And she's not particularly pretty.
She's got a slight boyish figure, a sort of bulldog face. Not that she's ugly. She's not ugly. But she certainly isn't like a remarkable standout beauty, someone who can get by on just her looks. No one was coming up to her and saying, Coco, you know, you should really be a model. OK, so she doesn't have amazing looks that she can rely on. And she also can't really sing.
Chapter 5: How did the Little Black Dress redefine fashion?
Her voice is kind of hoarse and she can carry a little bit of a tune, but she doesn't have anyone's idea of like an opera singer voice. But that doesn't matter to her. She's just creating her own reality. So through the force of will and just personal magnetism, she succeeds as an entertaining girl.
Not as an actual singer, but someone who sings a little bit and otherwise kind of slinks around clubs, socializes with the men, makes them feel comfortable. This is actually where she gains the name Coco, Coco Chanel. Because remember, she's born Gabrielle Chanel, but they call her Coco because there are only a couple of songs that she can actually sing.
And so she really relies on those because she's not a great singer. And one of them has Coco in the name. So she becomes Coco, Coco Chanel. Though, of course, she lies about this and says that her dad used to call her Coco as a little girl, as like a little pet name.
And look, her doing this, being sort of an entertaining girl in this resort town, she's not a prostitute, but she's not that far from it either. And she's doing what she needs to do to get by. That is a kind of hallmark of Coco Chanel. She had a very strong survival instinct, which sometimes landed her in hot water. So again, I say she's not a prostitute, but she's not that far from it.
Eventually, she does end up as a mistress, as the second string mistress of a rich young playboy named Etienne Balsan. He's the heir to this really vast manufacturing business. And so he doesn't really have to work. You can kind of do whatever he wants. And he basically raises horses and plays polo full time on his country estate where he installs Cocoa. As his second string mistress. So he's got.
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Chapter 6: What leadership qualities did Coco Chanel exhibit?
At least one other mistress. And it's interesting. It kind of tells you the survival instincts. And the charisma of Coco. That this other mistress is kind of first stringer. She is like a world class. model and beauty. She's internationally famous for her beauty. That's his mistress number one. Number two is Coco. How does she get her way in to this guy's good graces if she's not so beautiful?
She doesn't have this amazing singing voice. She's not famous. What does she have? Well, one thing is she really did actually learn to ride horses at this orphanage. And he really loves horses. Like, again, he's an heir. He doesn't really have to worry about working. So he's just playing polo and riding horses all day. And Coco loves horses. And so she can ride really well. She's active.
Chapter 7: How did World War II affect Chanel's career?
Yeah.
In their world, they just sit around all day. They maybe read a little bit. They chat with the other women. And then at night, they are there to entertain and
provide in the way that they're expected to provide um but she is with the boys during the day okay she is riding um she's witty she's like she's almost a friend in addition to being a courtesan and so that charm that charisma is just she's it's like she's playing a completely different game than the other girls okay Coco Chanel I'm not like the other girls right and
And so this gets into his good graces. So this guy Balsan, he's keeping her on his estate. He's providing for her, giving her room and board and food and clothes and everything that she needs. She's not a wife, not even his main mistress, but she is sort of a kept woman. And it's on Balsan's estate that she meets the great love of her life. His name is Arthur Capelle. He goes by Boy.
That's his nickname, Boy Capelle. It's also on Balsan's estate that she originally starts selling hats. At the time, women would put their hair up into these elaborate updos that were structured and would have like things in them to hold them up. And so they were very elaborate.
And so you needed this big hat with a big top that could accommodate this like giant braid sitting on top of their head, this like big cone. So there were these big structured hats that were very over the top. And so Coco goes the opposite way. And she creates these very simple plain hats from the Justine Picardy biography. She writes, the one certainty was her decisive approach to fashion.
Coco dressed like a young convent girl or a schoolboy and made hats that were stripped of embellishments of the frills and furl below that she dismissed as weighing a woman down and being too cumbersome to let her think straight. They weren't entirely original. At first, she bought simple straw boaters from the gallery's Lafayette department store and then trimmed them with ribbon herself.
Okay, and at first, this is all she's doing. She's just selling hats. This is in her early 20s, and we're talking about the first decade of the 20th century. At some point, this turns into an actual business with more than hats. She's selling dresses. It's basically a boutique. Again, the records are kind of sketchy and Coco's narrative is famously unreliable.
But at some point in this first decade of the 20th century, she starts turning it into an actual business. She's selling different articles of clothing, but the hat is the main thing for her at first. So Karen Carbo, in her biography, writes, Okay? So... Again, she is making hats that are so simple they're eccentric. They're kind of odd.
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Chapter 8: What are the key takeaways from Coco Chanel's legacy?
Chanel would say, one shouldn't spend all one's time dressing. All one needs are two or three suits, as long as they and everything to go with them are perfect. A couple other good quotes about sort of this new modern woman. She says, style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
So it is like a more confident, assertive woman than would have been normal certainly in the 19th century. She also said, how many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. So she's really trying to empower herself and women with this new style of dress. The idea is I'm deciding.
I'm not just plugging into society and being an object to be looked at and appreciated by men. No, I am someone. I'm not just something. I'm someone. And I'm deciding who that someone is. And I'm sticking to it. So that confidence, that assertiveness was really distinctive of Chanel and what she represented of this sort of new modern woman.
However, the irony here is at this point, she is still being underwritten by her male companions, especially boy Capel. So she's kind of transferred from Balsan to Capel. And Capel becomes the main love of her life. They start living together. She is his primary mistress. He eventually gets married while Chanel is still his mistress. And she becomes like friends with his wife.
She kind of acknowledges Chanel's place in his orbit. Um, he needed, you know, he really had pretensions of being a great man. And so he needed a traditional aristocratic wife. So he goes and gets one, but she really likes Chanel. Chanel really likes her. So it's this very odd menage a trois, uh, that goes on between the three of them.
But like I said, at this point, she's got this new idea of what a modern woman is and how she should dress, but she's still being supported by Boy Capel. But of course, she wants to change that. So let's see how she parlays this into major business success. First, I want to give a quick shout out to Van Man. The first thing I do after I shower is throw on some beef tallow and honey balm.
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It's still being supported by her boyfriend, Boy Capel, who is the great love of her life. Her business is located in Deauville, which is a seaside resort town in northern France with a casino. So she's basically selling to rich women, mostly French, on vacation. World War I was a big boon to her business because during wartime, women don't want these big poofy dresses and difficult contraptions.
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