Coco Chanel didn’t have a glamorous start to life. She was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on 19th August 1883, in Saumur, France. After her mother’s death, Chanel was put in an orphanage by her father. She was raised by nuns who taught her how to sew – something which became useful to her in later life. Around the age of 20, Chanel started a relationship with Etienne Balsan who offered to help her start a millinery business in Paris. She left him soon afterwards for one of his even wealthier friends, Arthur “Boy” Capel.
With the necessary financial backing, Chanel opened her first shop on Paris’s Rue Cambon in 1910. She started selling hats. Within a short period of time, she opened more shops in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. Her first dress was made out of an old jumper. Many people seemed to like it and asked her where she got it from. “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville,” she once told author Paul Morand.