Chanel ─ The Enigma

This new biography offers unprecedented insight into Coco Chanel’s complex and enigmatic life, and features previously unpublished information and images. The great fashion designer Coco Chanel continues to beguile more than four decades after her death, and her life and work remain a source of enduring fascination. Chanel expert Isabelle Fiemeyer now unveils the mysteries that have surrounded the private and public figure by piecing together new research with accounts from Chanel’s intimate friends and relatives, artists, writers, photographers, directors, actors, and those who worked with her inside the House of Chanel.
The volume opens by introducing readers to the carefully crafted persona that Coco Chanel herself tailored. Then, chapter by chapter, the author gradually unveils each layer of mystery that surrounded Chanel to reveal the woman behind the intrigue. Her life oscillated between periods of darkness and light—injuries, an absent father, abandonment, and loss, which were offset by her vivid imagination, symbolic talismans that comforted her, collaborations with great artists, and intense creative production.
While the designer was sometimes reviled and vilified, this volume offers a deeper understanding of Chanel and fresh revelations about her life. The author’s extensive research and revelatory analysis are illustrated in this handsome volume with photographs and previously unpublished material, including new documents from the wartime period. This new biography of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is an indispensable addition to all fashion libraries.

Isabelle Fiemeyer is a respected literary and fashion historian who has written many works on the subject of Coco Chanel, includingIntimate Chanel.