Chanel

Coco Chanel was a legend who revolutionised the way women looked. She became the single most important arbiter of fashion and taste in the 20th century. Just her name was sufficient to convey prestige, quality and unmistakable style. The Duke of Westminster wooed her, Stravinsky played for her and Goldwyn enticed her to Hollywood. She knew everybody who was anybody in the world of the arts from Picasso and Cocteau to Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman. She designed frankly fake jewellery, introduced the basic 'little black dress' and perfumed the world with her No. 5. However, as this remarkable biography shows, there was a mass of contradictions behind the myth of 'Mademoiselle'. Chanel follows her story from her upbringing in provincial Auvergne through her first successes in the 1920s to her comeback in the 1950s and 1960s. Edmond Charles-Roux's book is definitive as history and immensely entertaining as gossip.