Few designers have managed to rewrite the rules of fashion so completely that their surname becomes shorthand for elegance itself. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel didn’t just create a brand; she engineered an aesthetic revolution. She freed women from the tyranny of corsets, made jersey chic, and built a fragrance so enduring that it still outsells rivals nearly a century later. And yet, her legacy isn’t all gilt-edged buttons and pearls—it’s also layered with shadows, especially when it comes to her activities during World War II.
The Liberation of the Female Silhouette
When Chanel emerged in the 1910s, women’s wardrobes were still bound by corsetry and convention. She didn’t shatter those confines overnight, but dismantled them with quiet persistence—elevating ease into the highest form of luxury. Knit jerseys, languid cardigans, and sailor blouses blurred the boundary between sportswear and daywear. In an age when femininity was tethered to restriction, Chanel reimagined women’s dress as an instrument of freedom, grace, and movement. Her clothes gave women not only the ability to breathe, but the space to live.
The Chanel Suit: Armour in Bouclé
By the 1950s, the Chanel suit had become her calling card: a collarless, boxy jacket with braid trim, paired with a skirt that grazed the knee. It was smart, unfussy, and—crucially—comfortable. Worn by everyone from Jackie Kennedy to Catherine Deneuve, it wasn’t just a garment; it was a manifesto of modern womanhood. This was clothing that could move from a boardroom to a dinner party without so much as a stitch out of place.
The Alchemy of No. 5
Then there was the perfume. When Chanel No. 5 debuted in 1921, it transcended the conventions of a simple floral. At its heart bloomed rose and jasmine, but it was the daring use of aldehydes that transformed the composition—lending a luminous, champagne-like effervescence that felt both fresh and eternal. It was perfume as abstraction, a scent that seemed to exist outside of time. Chanel marketed it with characteristic audacity: Marilyn Monroe famously claimed she wore nothing to bed but “five drops of Chanel No. 5,” sealing its place in pop culture. Today, it remains a benchmark—proof that good design can be bottled as easily as it can be tailored.
A Complex Wartime Chapter
But between these triumphs lies a chapter that refuses to be airbrushed. During the Nazi occupation of Paris, Chanel lived at the Hôtel Ritz—which, at the time, also housed high-ranking German officers. Historians have documented her romantic relationship with a German military intelligence officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, and her attempts to leverage wartime laws to regain control of her perfume business from her Jewish business partners, the Wertheimer family (who had prudently moved operations out of occupied France).
The debate over Chanel’s actions and associations during the Nazi occupation has fueled decades of scholarship and speculation: Was she a collaborator, a woman navigating perilous circumstances, or some combination of both? She never publicly accounted for this period in detail, leaving historians—and the fashion world—to grapple with a past that remains as complex as the woman herself.
Empowerment, with an Asterisk
It’s tempting to see Chanel purely as a feminist trailblazer: she built an empire in a male-dominated industry, lived by her own rules, and cultivated a singular, uncompromising vision. But like anyone, she was a product of her time—her story shaped as much by the era’s limitations as by her own ambition.
Despite the controversies, the Chanel brand has endured and flourished in the decades since her death in 1971. Under Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard, her codes remained intact: the quilted bags, the two-tone shoes, the tweed suits, the unapologetic luxury. And now, as Matthieu Blazy steps in as creative director this upcoming season, the fashion world is watching closely to see how he will honour—and perhaps reinterpret—those iconic codes for a new era.
Coco Chanel’s name will forever evoke pearls, perfume, and a certain Parisian insouciance. But if we’re honest, it should also conjure the complexity of ambition, the compromises of survival, and the shadows that sometimes fall across even the brightest legacies. She revolutionised what women wore, how they moved, and even how they smelled—but the full measure of her life, like the best of her designs, lies in the details you can’t see at first glance.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA USA, Author: David Ruff.
READ MORE
Thread Talk With Cassey Gan on the Latest Collection of Her Eponymous Label
Jennie Is The Romantic Lead Of Our Dreams In Chanel’s Fall/Winter 2025 Pre-Collection