For almost a century, the name of Chanel has been inextricably linked to elegance, modernity and fashion innovation. It was Chanel who single-handedly made striped jerseys and loose trousers chic, costume jewellery desirable, the little black dress the height of sophistication, and tweed suits a staple of every stylish woman's wardrobe.

In this beautifully illustrated book, dress historian Amy de la Haye celebrates Gabrielle Coco Chanel as the couturier who changed the way stylish women everywhere dress, then and now. She examines the creative output of this most famous of fashion houses, from its infancy in the 1920s to the present day as it continues to prosper under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld.

About the Author:

Amy de la Haye is a curator, writer, dress historian and fashion critic.

«Одинокая Chanel» - книга о женщине, ее страстях и потерях, юности и смерти. Книга вышла во Франции еще в 1983 году и сразу наделала шума. Еще бы: книгу написала Клод Делэ, психоаналитик и близкая подруга подругой самой Шанель. Она знала об одиночестве мадемуазель Коко, была посвящена в подробности её личной жизни, являлась свидетельницей веселых кутежей и последних, мрачных дней Великой мадемуазель, проведенных в парижском отеле Ritz.

Это вторая книга о Шанель, представленная издательством СЛОВО/SLOVO; первая – «Время Шанель» Эдмонды Шарль-Ру, лауреата Гонкуровской премии, - стала бестселлером. «Одинокая Шанель» издательства «Слово/Slovo» еще раз познакомит читателей с неподражаемой Коко, но уже не просто с гениальным творцом, королевой стиля и человеком от мира моды. Это знакомство с женщиной, которая прожила фантастическую жизнь - долгую, интересную и трагичную.

Эта книга о грациозной наезднице, обожавшей лошадей и покорявшей мужские сердца умением сидеть в седле; эта книга о музе, которая дружила с самыми Кокто, Пикассо, Дягилевым – великими художниками, намного опережавшими свое время, - и при этом ничуть не разбиралась в живописи; эта книга о возлюбленной герцога Вестминстерского, которая каталась на яхте под золотыми парусами - и ни на день не забывала о том, что она – беспородная девчонка из провинции, и – сама Коко Шанель.

Mademoiselle presents photographs of Coco Chanel taken by Douglas Kirkland in 1962 on assignment in Paris for the American magazine Look. These photos reveal both the working fashion icon and the sympathetic character beneath, showing Mademoiselle leaving her suite at the Ritz Hotel, in her apartment and studio at 31 rue Cambon, and watching a défilé from the famous mirrored staircase. Karl Lagerfeld has conceived and designed Mademoiselle, as well as written an introduction and captions to Kirkland’s photos. “Images left behind are in the end stronger than truth and facts. Through Kirkland’s images we can imagine what the famous Coco had been all about before she became the formidable Chanel.” (Karl Lagerfeld)

Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel is an icon of fashion, and can lay claim to having invented the look of the 20th century.

At the height of the Belle Époque, she stripped women of their corsets and feathers, bobbed their hair, put them in bathing suits and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced the little black dress; trousers for women; costume jewelry; the exquisitely comfortable suit that became her trademark. Early in the Roaring Twenties, Chanel made the first ever couture perfume – No. 5 – presenting it in the famous little square-cut flagon that, inspired by Picasso and Cubism, became the arch symbol of the Art Deco style. No. 5 remains the most popular scent ever created. Chanel knew instinctively that the road to success lay in being absolutely at one with her own time. And what a time! The era of Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Jean Renoir,Visconti – all of whom ‘Coco’ knew and collaborated with, even as she matched their modernist innovations by liberating women from the prison of 19th-century fashion and creating a whole new concept of elegance. Chanel went everywhere and knew everyone and, as this sumptuously illustrated volume clearly shows, her life and accomplishment – even her chronic failure in love – constitute one of the great stories of the modern age.

Her life is eminently suited to the lavish visual treatment of this handsome volume, which features more than 600 illustrations from an extraordinary collection amassed over the years by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel’s official biographer and close friend. An authoritative and practised writer, Charles-Roux has used careful research and vivid eyewitness accounts to set the pictures in their context of time and place. She makes Chanel live again!

She was a creature of contrasts: there was the Chanel of rococo mirrors and playful jewellery; but also the Chanel of the tailored suit, of the utmost restraint; of classicism à la française.
The jewellery that Chanel created presents one of the least-known aspects of her work: in complement to her ‘costume jewellery’, she invented jewellery that was unparalleled in luxury and refinement and unfettered in its imagination.

Using illustrations and documents, many of them previously unpublished, and based on archival research and interviews with Chanel’s colleagues and other witnesses of her life and career, this book presents her passion for fabulous jewels and improbable marvels.