Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel (1883-1971) never ran a lingerie house, but the clothes she made in Deauville, Biarritz and Paris between 1913 and the late 1920s changed what women wore underneath. Gabrielle Chanel built her early success on jersey, a knit then mostly used for underwear and sportswear, and on loose, unboned shapes that made the tightly corseted figure look old-fashioned.

An underwear peddler's daughter

She was born on 19 August 1883 in Saumur, in western France. Her father, Albert Chanel, was an itinerant market trader who sold work clothes and undergarments. After her mother's death, when Gabrielle was 11, she was sent to the convent orphanage at Aubazine, where she spent six years and learned to sew. She later worked as a seamstress in Moulins and sang in a cafe-concert, where the nickname "Coco" attached itself.

Deauville, 1913: underwear fabric goes outside

Chanel became a licensed milliner in 1910 and opened a shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris. In 1913, with money from Arthur "Boy" Capel, she opened a boutique in Deauville selling casual clothes for leisure and sport. They were cut from humble fabrics, jersey and tricot, which at the time were mainly used for men's underwear.

Rodier's machine knit

The jersey was made for her by the firm Rodier. Couturiers disliked it because a knit is harder to handle than a woven cloth, and it was considered too ordinary for high fashion. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she bought it first because it was cheap. Wartime shortages of traditional couture fabrics, and women's need for clothes they could work and travel in and put on without a maid, kept it selling. A Biarritz house followed in 1915, and by 1916 she had repaid Capel's investment. In 1919 she registered as a couturière at 31 rue Cambon.

The corset loses its job

Fashion historians credit her rise with the final blow to the corseted silhouette. Her early jersey suits paired a cardigan jacket with a pleated skirt and a low-belted pullover. The tweed suit, introduced in 1923, used no stiffening and no shoulder pads, and its jackets were cut on the straight grain without bust darts so the wearer could move easily.

In 1926 American Vogue published a long-sleeved Chanel little black dress and compared it to the Ford car, a design for everyone. Male critics of the flat new line complained of "no more bosom, no more stomach, no more rump." For the underwear trade that complaint read like a brief: a straight, low-waisted dress over a body that moved freely called for light underpinnings rather than a shaping corset.

Where the credit stops

Chanel did not invent the bra and did not design lingerie under her name. Her contribution was indirect: by moving a fabric from the underwear drawer into couture, and by making an unshaped body the fashionable one, she changed the brief for everyone who made foundation garments. Seventy years earlier Amelia Bloomer had argued for the same freedom of movement and been laughed at. Chanel sold it as chic.

Closing and reopening

Her couture house closed in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War. She reopened in 1954, at more than 70, with financing from Pierre Wertheimer. The French press was cool; the American and British press called the comeback a breakthrough. She died in Paris on 10 January 1971.

Last updated October 7, 2026