Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born on 19 August 1883 in Saumur, in the Loire valley, to an itinerant market trader and a laundrywoman. After her mother died when she was eleven, her father placed her and her sisters in the convent orphanage at Aubazine, in the Corrèze. There the nuns taught her to sew, and the abbey's austere black and white, its stained glass and its geometry are often seen in her later work. At eighteen she moved to Moulins to work as a seamstress, and she sang in cafés frequented by cavalry officers, where she acquired the nickname Coco.

With the support of the officer Étienne Balsan and later of the English polo player Arthur "Boy" Capel, she began making hats. In 1910 she opened a millinery shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris under the name Chanel Modes. In 1913 she opened a boutique in Deauville, and in 1915 a couture house in Biarritz. Her clothes, made from jersey, a humble knit then used for men's underwear, offered women something radically new: loose, unconstricted dresses, sailor tops and practical separates that took cues from menswear and sportswear. By 1918 she had moved to 31 rue Cambon, still the house's address.

The 1920s made her the defining designer of the modern woman. In 1921 she launched Chanel No. 5, created with the perfumer Ernest Beaux and presented in a bottle of striking simplicity. It became the world's most famous fragrance. In 1926 American Vogue published her short black dress and called it "Chanel's Ford", a garment for all women. She introduced costume jewellery worn in abundance, with long ropes of faux pearls mixed with real stones, and in the 1920s she created the collarless tweed suit, using Scottish tweeds. She moved in the circles of Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Picasso and Cocteau, and designed costumes for the Ballets Russes and the theatre. Her personal style of short hair, a suntan and comfortable clothes became a model for her era.

She closed her couture house in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War, keeping only the perfume and accessories business, and spent many years living in Switzerland. In February 1954, aged 70, she returned to Paris with a new collection. The French press was cool, but American women embraced her ease and precision. The braid-trimmed tweed suit, the quilted 2.55 handbag on its chain strap of February 1955, the two-tone slingback and the camellia became the codes of the house.

Chanel lived for many years at the Hôtel Ritz across the street from her studio and worked almost until the end. She died there on 10 January 1971, aged 87, and was buried in Lausanne. Karl Lagerfeld took over the house in 1983 and led it for 36 years; he was followed by Virginie Viard and, since 2025, by Matthieu Blazy. Chanel is now owned privately by the Wertheimer family. Time named her among the hundred most influential people of the twentieth century, the only fashion designer on the list. The freedom she gave women's clothes, and the confidence of her simple lines, remain central to the way people dress today.