Coco Chanel
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was a French couturier, the founder of the House of Chanel and one of the people who shaped the look of the twentieth-century woman. She spent her childhood in the orphanage at the abbey of Aubazine and started out with a hat shop in Paris. She freed women’s clothing from the corset, made jersey, the little black dress and the tweed suit fashionable, and in 1921 launched the perfume Chanel No. 5.
Born in Saumur, France, on 19 August 1883 at 16:00 local time: France adopted a single Paris time only in 1891. The hour is given in reference works citing the birth record; we have not seen the document itself.