The Cevennes

The region in France where Chanel was born; a provincial area full of peasants who had been poor for generations. Chanel's family was no different, and so Chanel would spend her whole life trying to distance herself from her connection with it. Her grandfather had a tavern that would later become a bistro and would disrupt family life significantly, providing a place for the men to gather instead of returning home to their families. Her father was an itinerant peddler, and abandoned Chanel and her little sister Antoinette when their mother died. As a result, Chanel and her sister were raised in an orphanage whose stark white would become a kind of beauty that haunted Chanel throughout her life. When she had her first summer home built, she sent the architect to study that very place and bring elements of it to her home. Provincial France...