Once upon a time, there lived a little girl who hid her humble origins all her life and preferred to invent her own legend.
Once upon a time, Gabrielle Chanel was born under the sign of the Leo to a traveling peddler and a laundress who died at 32, exhausted by life.
Once upon a time, there was a father who abandoned his five children and had his three daughters sent away to an orphanage.
At 12 years old, Gabrielle would never see him again.
Forever after, she pretended that he had left to make his way in America.
Once upon a time, there was an orphanage behind the walls of a convent, the Abbey of Aubazine, where Gabrielle spent nearly seven years.
The Romanesque purity of this ascetic world would inspire her sense of austerity and her taste for black and white, while the opulence of religious garments and ceremonial objects would spark her fascination with Baroque style, gold and coloured gems in years to come.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl who spent her days sewing and her nights singing in a cabaret before troops of cavalrymen.
She was called Coco because she often sang, Who's seen Coco in the Trocadero?
She always preferred to pretend that Coco was the nickname given to her by her father.
