If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, WWD may receive an affiliate commission.
Chanel may be over 100 years old, but the brand is still relevant: The French label still tops Statista’s list of the most recognizable luxury fashion houses in the U.S., alongside Gucci and Dior. But Chanel’s enduring status as the epitome of chic is largely thanks to its founder’s namesake.
More from WWD
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel launched her eponymous label in 1910. Several products created during her reign — including tweed skirt suits, quilted flap bags, and Chanel No. 5 — remain among the brand’s best-sellers. Nods to Chanel even persist in posthumous releases like Coco Mademoiselle eau de parfum and Coco Rouge lipstick.
Chanel is known for her unconventional approach to design, setting trends with unconventional fabrics, colors and textures, many of which originated in menswear. Today, she is often seen as the mother of modern fashion, and was one of the first major designers to combine comfort and simplicity with style.
In honor of her 141st birthday, we look back at the major milestones in Chanel’s career.
1910: First Chanel boutique opens
Chanel began her career in fashion as a milliner, opening her first store, Chanel Modes, at 21 Rue Cambon in 1910. French actresses, including Gabrielle Dorziat, helped put Chanel on the map by wearing her early designs both on and off the stage.
Photos of Coco Chanel through the years: her evolution from 1910 to 1960
View Gallery
In 1915, Chanel opened two more stores in the French coastal towns of Deauville and Biarritz. She introduced ready-to-wear designs and fashionable sportswear made from jersey, a lightweight fabric that was then used to make men’s underwear. Chanel helped popularize breathable textiles for women in an era of restrictive garments like corsets, with her jersey line becoming an instant success.
Chanel employed 300 artisans at her first couture house in Biarritz, where she designed her debut haute couture collection.
Three years later, Chanel opened her Parisian boutique at 31 Rue Cambon, where it still stands today. The designer also established her couture house at that address.
1921: Launch of Chanel No.5
Chanel collaborated with perfumer Ernest Beaux to create her house’s first fragrance, Chanel No. 5. With notes of jasmine and musk, it remains one of the world’s best-selling perfumes. Named after the sample Chanel liked best, the couturier also saw the number five as a good omen.
“I show my collections on May 5th, the fifth month of the year, so let’s leave the number on it, and this number five will bring good luck,” she once said.
Like her clothes, Chanel tried to innovate in the perfume category by producing a simplistic bottle design. At the time, many perfumes came in elaborate crystal flacons. According to legend, the Chanel No. 5 bottle was based on a whisky decanter belonging to her lover, Captain Arthur Edward “Boy” Capel.
Today, the fragrance is associated with Marilyn Monroe, who coined its name in a 1952 Time cover story: “This guy says, ‘Marilyn, what do you wear to bed?’ I said, I only wear Chanel No. 5.” An iconic photo of Monroe applying Chanel No. 5 was used in a 2013 campaign promoting the perfume. Other notable spokespeople include Catherine Deneuve, Nicole Kidman, and Chanel herself, who appeared in the fragrance’s first advertisement.
1925-1926: Chanel introduces the tweed skirt suit and the little black dress
Capel wasn’t Chanel’s only male muse — one of her brand’s most common staples, the tweed skirt suit, grew out of her relationship with the Duke of Westminster. The pair vacationed together in the Scottish Highlands, where athletes wore suits made from wool knits. Chanel feminized the textile, lightening it and livening up colorful skirt suits with fur trim, metallic threads, and lion-encrusted buttons in a nod to the designer’s zodiac sign.
One of the most famous Chanel tweed skirt suits is Jackie Kennedy’s. With navy piping and a double-breasted silhouette, she wore a cotton-candy pink ensemble on the day of her husband’s assassination. She refused to remove the bloodstained suit when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in. “Show them what they’ve done,” she reportedly told her staff.
As first lady, Kennedy was encouraged to wear only clothes from American designers, but she found a workaround by having a Park Avenue boutique, Chez Ninon, make the Chanel suit from materials supplied by the French brand.
In the 1920s, Chanel helped pioneer the flapper look. Her loose, beaded dresses subverted the hourglass silhouettes of the Edwardian and Belle Époque eras and offered greater freedom of movement. In 1926, she debuted what is now commonly known as the “little black dress.” The simple, utilitarian design was compared to Henry Ford’s Model T. In the Jazz Age, women began to embrace more masculine fashions, with the flat chest and dropped waist of Chanel’s “Ford” becoming trendy.
The nickname “LBD” is derived from one of Chanel’s famous quotes: “Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is hard.” Today, little black dresses – Chanel or otherwise – are still widely considered a wardrobe essential.
1933: Chanel debuts the Camellia motif
The camellia is often associated with Chanel, as it appears in the form of brooches, scarf prints and even on packaging. The designer’s flair for flowers dates back to her youth, when she first read Alexandre Dumas’ “The Lady of the Camellias.” Chanel was drawn to the story’s heroine, a courtesan who wore a white camellia as a sign of availability.
Chanel officially launched its first camellia design in 1933, when the flower adorned a black suit with white piping. Today, the brand still makes extensive use of the camellia, with the label’s former creative director Virginie Viard using it as the centerpiece of Chanel’s fall 2023 runway show set.
At the 2023 Met Gala honoring Karl Lagerfeld, several stars wore camellia-motif designs, including Anne Hathaway, whose custom dress interspersed the flower with Versace’s signature safety pins, and Cardi B, who wore a latex creation by Chenpeng Studio covered in oversized, three-dimensional camellias.
1955: Chanel unveils the 2.55
The quilted flap bag is another quintessential Chanel product. Although the brand had been producing handbags since the 1920s, it wasn’t until 1955 that they launched the 2.55, named after the date it was created.
Today, many Chanel bags feature the double C-lock — a Lagerfeld addition — but the 2.55 has a rectangular “mademoiselle” lock, a nod to Coco herself, who never married. The chain strap also differs from modern versions, which are typically woven from leather. Like many Chanel classics, the 2.55 was designed with both fashion and function in mind: The bag’s shoulder straps allowed for hands-free carrying in an era when top-handle handbags reigned supreme. Chanel borrowed the 2.55’s signature quilting from groomsmen, who often wore jackets with the puffy pattern.
Legacy
Chanel died in 1971 at the age of 87. Like her successor Lagerfeld, she continued to design until her death. Today, Chanel is still synonymous with luxury and many of the products she pioneered are still considered fashion grails.
The designer has also been the subject of films, television shows and even stage productions. The first, “Coco,” a musical starring Katharine Hepburn, wrapped a year before Chanel’s death. Her life is also now the focus of a ballet titled “Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon,” set to debut in Hong Kong in 2023.
On screen, Chanel has been portrayed by actresses including Audery Tatou and Shirley McLaine. More recently, Juliette Binoche embodied the couturier in “The New Look,” an Apple TV+ miniseries that charts the rise of Christian Dior — and sheds light on Chanel’s Nazi ties.
While Chanel is looking for a new creative director after Viard leaves in 2024, the brand is maintaining its financial success. The luxury house reported revenues totaling $19.7 billion last year, up 16 percent on a comparable basis, with double-digit growth across all categories. Price increases alone accounted for a 9 percent progression
Launch Gallery: Photos of Coco Chanel Through the Years: Her Evolution from 1910 to 1960
The Best of WWD