Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

By Justine Picardie

Justine Picardie has spent the last decade puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel, attempting to peel away the accretions of romance and lies. In this critically acclaimed, bestselling biography she shares the history of the incredible woman who created the way we look now.

Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor – she conjured up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, best-selling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time – but she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture.

While Chanel was supreme innovator and vendor of all things elegant and beautiful, what lies beneath her own glossy myth is far darker. Throwing new light on her passionate and turbulent relationships, this beautifully constructed portrait gives a fresh and penetrating look at how Coco Chanel made herself into her own most powerful creation.

Justine Picardie brings the mysterious Gabrielle Chanel out of hiding, to celebrate her great achievements. She examines Chanel's enduring afterlife, as well as her remarkable life, uncovering the consequences of what she covered up, unpicking the seams between truth and legend, yet keeping intact the real fabric of her past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Sep 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9780007346295

Justine Picardie

JUSTINE PICARDIE is the author of four books, including her critically acclaimed memoir, If The Spirit Moves You. The former features director of British Vogue, and contributor to the Sunday Telegraph and Red magazine, she is now Editor in Chief for Harper’s Bazaar. She lives in London with her two sons.

Reviews for Coco Chanel

[karenmerguerian · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If you are interested in Chanel you should read this but there are some caveats. First the photographs and reproductions are excellent but, instead of being grouped in the center as with many biographies, they are scattered throughout, and perhaps to ennhance them, all the paper has some gloss, which makes it very tiring to read the text due to glare. Second, the text is in a sans serif font with thin lines which is very hard on the eyes. It would be very stylish for short texts or ads, but for a book length text it's not appropriate and along with the glare from the choice of paper makes reading this extremely difficult.Finally on content: the book goes on and on about Chanel's friends and lovers at the expense of discussion of her work as a designer. Because she obfuscated her childhood the chapters on Chanel's life up to the early 1920s are difficult to follow and the book doesn't move exactly chronologically so it's hard to tell what things were happening when. And then there are endless paragraphs of backstory about the families, friends, and lovers of her friends and lovers and it's not always clear how that information helps us understand Chanel herself or why we should care. The biggest disappointment is how little information there is about Chanel's clothing designs. For example, there's more information about the house she built on the Riviera than there is about the clothes she designed at the same time. I know very little about her artistic development, and I'd like to learn about the salient features of her notable collections and individual pieces--and less about her glamorous "lifestyle" and the yachts of the husbands of her friends.

[djjazzyd-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A satisfying real life tale of rags to riches tale of Coco Chanel reveals a strong women who made her way up to the higher circles of her time. She established an allure, a romance, a mystery so that even this detailed autobiography leaves questions about her life and real feelings. It is inspirational to a young entrepreneur as she battled through all kinds of setback, problem and disappointment but eventually has led to a household name that has survived the years as a quality luxury product.