Humble Beginnings

While Chanel tried her whole life to keep her beginnings from becoming known to the world, they served to magnify the remarkable nature of her career. Having come from a family with no expectations nor offering any support, she followed a vision that was born exclusively inside herself. While her aunt Adrienne and her sister Antoinette were enthusiastic supporters, they followed Chanel on a path she blazed on her own.

She was also artful in her simultaneous entrance into and studying of society when artfulness played no observable part in her upbringing. She was content to stay outside society, at the racetrack with Balsan, and even at her summer home in her prime, and watch the women she dressed rather than presuming any place among them. While she was independently wealthy and regarded by all of society as a genius, she remained separated from it, aware that...