When did Degas sculpt his "Little Dancer"?

Between 1878 and 1881, Degas drew, painted and sculpted Marie in artworks including "Dancer with Fan", "Dancing Lesson", "Dancer Resting", numerous preparatory sketches, and most famously in "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years". He frequently attended ballet performances at the Paris Opera and often observed classes at the dance school. By posing for Degas, Marie likely earned five to six francs per four-hour sitting.

Marie van Goethem

Marie Geneviève van Goethem (or Goetham or Goeuthen; born 7 June 1865) was a French ballet student and dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet, and the model for Edgar Degas's statue "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" ("La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans").

Marie was the daughter of a laundress and a tailor, who came to Paris in the early 1860s from Belgium. She was born in 1865 in the diverse 9th arrondissement of Paris. Marie's oldest sister, Antoinette, was born in Brussels in 1861. A second older sister, also named Marie, died eighteen days after her birth in 1864. Marie's younger sister, Louise Joséphine, born in Paris in 1870, adopted the name of Charlotte and died there in 1945. Her father died at some point between 1870 and 1880, leaving Madame van Goethem to fend for her three daughters on a laundress's income.

In 1865, the year Marie was born, the family moved to a stone apartment building on 'Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette' called 'Place Bréda' near Degas's studio on 'Rue Saint-Georges'. The Bréda district was one of the city's poorest and most squalid areas for prostitution. In 1880, after frequently changing their place of residence (an indicator of an inability to pay the rent on time) the family settled on 'Rue de Douai' on the lower slopes of Montmartre, a few blocks from Degas's studio, then located on 'Rue Fontaine'.

In 1878, Marie and Charlotte were accepted into the dance school of the Paris Opéra, where Antoinette was employed as an extra. In 1880 Marie passed the examination admitting her to the corps de ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet and made her debut on the stage in "La Korrigane".

When "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. Though critics lauded the work as “the only truly modern attempt" at sculpture, the majority were shocked by the piece. They compared the dancer to a monkey and an Aztec, and referred to her as a "flower of precocious depravity" with a face "marked by the hateful promise of every vice" and "bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character." She looked like a medical specimen, they reported, in part because Degas exhibited the sculpture inside a glass case.

In the year following the exhibition of the sculpture, Marie's dance career ended as a result of missing many dance classes. An article in "L'Evénement", which preceded the dismissal by two months, reported "Miss van Goeuthen—fifteen years old, has an older sister who is an extra at the Opera and a younger sister in the Opera dance school—consequently she frequents the Martyrs Tavern and the Rat Mort." Neither tavern was a desirable place for a young girl. Though no trace of her subsequent life or death has been found, the historical record indicates her older sister, Antoinette, was jailed just prior to Marie's dismissal for stealing 700 francs from a patron at a tavern and her younger sister, Charlotte, became a dancer of some distinction and teacher at the dance school during her fifty-three-year career with the Paris Opera Ballet.

Cathy Marie Buchanan's novel, "The Painted Girls", presents a fictionalised account of the life of Marie van Goethem, as does Carolyn Meyer's young adult novel "Marie, Dancing" and Laurence Anholt's children's picture book "Degas and the Little Dancer". Most recently, a non-fiction work by Camille Laurens, "La petite danseuse de quatorze ans". (2017) discusses the dancer, the artist, the work, and its reception.

The BBC documentary "The Private Life of a Masterpiece: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen", produced in 2004, closely examined "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans", the circumstances of Marie's life, and the critical reaction to the sculpture.

With Boyd Gaines as Degas, and Rebecca Luker and New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck as adult and young Marie, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts premiered the Susan Stroman, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty stage musical, "Little Dancer", from October 25 to November 30 2014.

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (French: "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans") is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years

The sculpture is one-third life size and was originally sculpted in wax, a somewhat unusual choice of medium for the time. It is dressed in a real bodice, tutu and ballet slippers and has a wig of real hair. All but a hair ribbon and the tutu are covered in wax. The 28 bronze repetitions that appear in museums and galleries around the world today were cast after Degas' death. The tutus worn by the bronzes vary from museum to museum.

The exact relationship between Marie van Goethem and Edgar Degas is a matter of debate. It was common in 1880 for the "Petits Rats" of the Paris Opera to seek protectors from among the wealthy visitors at the back door of the opera.

Realistic wax figures with real hair and real clothes had also been popular in religious, Folk, and fine arts for centuries before Degas created his "Little Dancer".

The arms are taut, and the legs and feet are placed in a ballet position akin to fourth position at rest, and there is tension in the pose, an image of a ballerina being put through her paces, not posing in an angelic way. Her face is – "contorted, people thought it was a deliberate image of ugliness, but you could also say it's the image of a sickly gawky adolesecent who is being made to do something she doesn't totally want to do."

When the "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. Joris-Karl Huysmans called it "the first truly modern attempt at sculpture I know." Certain critics were shocked by the piece, and the dancer was compared to a monkey and an Aztec. One critic, Paul Mantz, called her the "flower of precocious depravity," with a face "marked by the hateful promise of every vice" and "bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character." Comparisons with older art were made, perhaps partly because it was exhibited in a glass case, like classical sculpture in the Louvre, and was dressed in wig and clothes.

After Degas' death, his heirs (brother and sister's children) made the decision to have the bronze repetitions of "La Petite Danseuse" and other wax and mixed-media sculptures cast. The casting took place at the Hébrard foundry in Paris from 1920 until 1936 when the Hébrard foundry went bankrupt and closed. Thereafter, "Hébrard" Degas "Little Dancer" bronzes were cast at the Valsuani foundry in Paris until the mid-1970s. Sixty-nine of Degas' wax sculptures survived the casting process. One copy of "La Petite Danseuse" is currently owned by the creator and owner of Auto Trader, John Madejski. He stated that he bought the sculpture by accident. That copy was sold for £13,257,250 ($19,077,250) at Sotheby's on February, 3rd 2009. Another Hébrard "Little Dancer" bronze failed to sell at a November 2011 auction at Christie's.

To construct the statue, Degas used pigmented beeswax, with a metal armature, rope, and paintbrushes covered by clay for structural support.

The "Little Dancer" wax sculpture we see today is a reworked version of the original sculpture that was shown in 1881. After seeing the wax sculpture in Degas’ living quarters in April 1903, the New York collector Louisine Havemeyer expressed interest in buying the wax. After proposing a bronze or cast wax of the sculpture, which Mrs. Havemeyer refused, Degas took his wax figure upstairs to his working studio and told Vollard he was reworking the sculpture for Havemeyer for 40,000 francs. Degas never sold the sculpture to Mrs. Havemeyer. After Degas died, it was found in a corner of his studio. Paul Lefond, Degas’ biographer, described the "Little Dancer" wax after Degas’ death as "nothing but a ruin;" and Mary Cassatt telegraphed Mrs. Havemeyer "Statue Bad Condition." However, the wax sculpture we know today is not a ruin. It is Degas' reworked second version of his wax figure. At some point before Degas extensively reworked his sculpture, he allowed a plaster to be cast from the wax figure. This recently re-discovered plaster records the "Little Dancer"’s original pose, bodice, and hairdo. The plaster is now in a private collection in the United States.

The original wax sculpture was acquired by Paul Mellon in 1956. Beginning in 1985, Mr and Mrs Mellon gave the National Gallery of Art 49 Degas waxes, 10 bronzes and 2 plasters, the largest group of original Degas sculptures. "Little Dancer" was among the bequests. In 1997, the Airaindor-Valsuani foundry in France began casting a limited edition of Degas bronzes from the pre-1903 "Little Dancer" plaster. One such "Little Dancer" bronze is owned by the M.T. Abraham Foundation, which, at times, is lent to other institutions and museums including the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Like the various states of many of Degas' prints, the Valsuani bronzes record the first version of Degas' "Little Dancer", while the Hébrard casts record the second and final state of the sculpture.

Art historian Richard Kendall published a scholarly account of the history of Degas's sculpture, "Degas and the Little Dancer", with contributions by Douglas Druick and Arthur Beale. The BBC Two documentary "The Private Life of a Masterpiece: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen", produced in 2004, closely examines the sculpture, the model, the circumstances of her life, and the critical reaction to the work. Cathy Marie Buchanan's novel, "The Painted Girls", presents a fictionalised account of the life of Marie van Goethem, the model for the sculpture, as does Carolyn Meyer's young adult novel "Marie, Dancing" and Laurence Anholt's children's picture book "Degas and the Little Dancer". In 2014, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. premiered the stage musical, "Little Dancer", inspired by the story of the young ballerina immortalized by Edgar Degas in his famous sculpture. On September 12, 2016, Dr. Gregory Hedberg presented a paper entitled "Unraveling the Mysteries of Degas’ "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen"," at the French Institute, Alliance Français, in New York City.

The piece inspired two of Damien Hirst's works, "Virgin Mother" and "Verity".

The sculpture is prominently featured in the 1993 thriller "Malice".

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years

Degas's only showing of sculpture during his life took place in 1881 when he exhibited "The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years". A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in a cloth tutu, it provoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. In a review, J.-K. Huysmans wrote: "The terrible reality of this statuette evidently produces uneasiness in the spectators; all their notions about sculpture, about those cold inanimate whitenesses... are here overturned. The fact is that with his first attempt Monsieur Degas has revolutionized the traditions of sculpture as he has long since shaken the conventions of painting."

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas ( or ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.

At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classical art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.

Degas was born in Paris, France, into a moderately wealthy family. He was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Augustin De Gas, a banker. His maternal grandfather Germain Musson, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti of French descent and had settled in New Orleans in 1810. Degas (he adopted this less grandiose spelling of his family name when he became an adult) began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. His mother died when he was thirteen, and his father and grandfather became the main influences on him for the remainder of his youth.

Degas began to paint early in life. By the time he graduated from the Lycée with a "baccalauréat" in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio. Upon graduating, he registered as a copyist in The Louvre Museum, but his father expected him to go to law school. Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but applied little effort to his studies. In 1855 he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whom Degas revered and whose advice he never forgot: "Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist." In April of that year Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. He studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres. In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he would remain for the next three years. In 1858, while staying with his aunt's family in Naples, he made the first studies for his early masterpiece "The Bellelli Family". He also drew and painted numerous copies of works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and other Renaissance artists, but—contrary to conventional practice—he usually selected from an altarpiece a detail that had caught his attention: a secondary figure, or a head which he treated as a portrait.

Upon his return to France in 1859, Degas moved into a Paris studio large enough to permit him to begin painting "The Bellelli Family"—an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon, although it remained unfinished until 1867. He also began work on several history paintings: "Alexander and Bucephalus" and "The Daughter of Jephthah" in 1859–60; "Sémiramis Building Babylon" in 1860; and "Young Spartans" around 1860. In 1861 Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy, and made the earliest of his many studies of horses. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting "Scene of War in the Middle Ages", which attracted little attention. Although he exhibited annually in the Salon during the next five years, he submitted no more history paintings, and his "Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey" (Salon of 1866) signaled his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 (while both were copying the same Velázquez portrait in the Louvre, according to a story that may be apocryphal).

Upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a constant worry to him.

After the war, Degas began in 1872 an extended stay in New Orleans, Louisiana, where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying at the home of his Creole uncle, Michel Musson, on Esplanade Avenue, Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members. One of Degas's New Orleans works, "A Cotton Office in New Orleans", garnered favorable attention back in France, and was his only work purchased by a museum (the Pau) during his lifetime.

Degas returned to Paris in 1873 and his father died the following year, whereupon Degas learned that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts. To preserve his family's reputation, Degas sold his house and an art collection he had inherited, and used the money to pay off his brother's debts. Dependent for the first time in his life on sales of his artwork for income, he produced much of his greatest work during the decade beginning in 1874. Disenchanted by now with the Salon, he instead joined a group of young artists who were organizing an independent exhibiting society. The group soon became known as the Impressionists. Between 1874 and 1886 they mounted eight art shows, known as the Impressionist Exhibitions. Degas took a leading role in organizing the exhibitions, and showed his work in all but one of them, despite his persistent conflicts with others in the group. He had little in common with Monet and the other landscape painters in the group, whom he mocked for painting outdoors. Conservative in his social attitudes, he abhorred the scandal created by the exhibitions, as well as the publicity and advertising that his colleagues sought. He also deeply disliked being associated with the term "Impressionist", which the press had coined and popularized, and insisted on including non-Impressionist artists such as Jean-Louis Forain and Jean-François Raffaëlli in the group's exhibitions. The resulting rancor within the group contributed to its disbanding in 1886.

As his financial situation improved through sales of his own work, he was able to indulge his passion for collecting works by artists he admired: old masters such as El Greco and such contemporaries as Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Édouard Brandon. Three artists he idolized, Ingres, Delacroix, and Daumier, were especially well represented in his collection.

In the late 1880s, Degas also developed a passion for photography. He photographed many of his friends, often by lamplight, as in his double portrait of Renoir and Mallarmé. Other photographs, depicting dancers and nudes, were used for reference in some of Degas's drawings and paintings.

As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due in part to his belief that a painter could have no personal life. The Dreyfus Affair controversy brought his anti-Semitic leanings to the fore and he broke with all his Jewish friends. His argumentative nature was deplored by Renoir, who said of him: "What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one of the last to go, but even I couldn't stay till the end."

Although he is known to have been working in pastel as late as the end of 1907, and is believed to have continued making sculptures as late as 1910, he apparently ceased working in 1912, when the impending demolition of his longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced him to move to quarters on Boulevard de Clichy. He never married and spent the last years of his life, nearly blind, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris before dying in September 1917.

Degas is often identified as an Impressionist, an understandable but insufficient description. Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of such painters as Courbet and Corot. The Impressionists painted the realities of the world around them using bright, "dazzling" colors, concentrating primarily on the effects of light, and hoping to infuse their scenes with immediacy. They wanted to express their visual experience in that exact moment.

Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that he continually belittled their practice of painting "en plein air".

You know what I think of people who work out in the open. If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.

"He was often as anti-impressionist as the critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian Carol Armstrong; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing." Nonetheless, he is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists—most notably Mary Cassatt and Édouard Manet—all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement.

Degas's style reflects his deep respect for the old masters (he was an enthusiastic copyist well into middle age) and his great admiration for Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix. He was also a collector of Japanese prints, whose compositional principles influenced his work, as did the vigorous realism of popular illustrators such as Daumier and Gavarni. Although famous for horses and dancers, Degas began with conventional historical paintings such as "The Daughter of Jephthah" (c.1859–61) and "The Young Spartans" (c.1860–62), in which his gradual progress toward a less idealized treatment of the figure is already apparent. During his early career, Degas also painted portraits of individuals and groups; an example of the latter is "The Bellelli Family" (c.1858–67), a brilliantly composed and psychologically poignant portrayal of his aunt, her husband, and their children. In this painting, as in "The Young Spartans" and many later works, Degas was drawn to the tensions present between men and women. In his early paintings, Degas already evidenced the mature style that he would later develop more fully by cropping subjects awkwardly and by choosing unusual viewpoints.
By the late 1860s Degas had shifted from his initial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. Racecourse scenes provided an opportunity to depict horses and their riders in a modern context. He began to paint women at work, milliners and laundresses. "Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source", exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified, dancers.

In many subsequent paintings dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing a job. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt. Degas began to paint café life as well, in works such as "L'Absinthe" and "Singer with a Glove". His paintings often hinted at narrative content in a way that was highly ambiguous; for example, "Interior" (which has also been called "The Rape") has presented a conundrum to art historians in search of a literary source—"Thérèse Raquin" has been suggested—but it may be a depiction of prostitution.

As his subject matter changed, so, too, did Degas's technique. The dark palette that bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. Paintings such as "Place de la Concorde" read as "snapshots," freezing moments of time to portray them accurately, imparting a sense of movement. The lack of color in the 1874 "Ballet Rehearsal on Stage" and the 1876 "The Ballet Instructor" can be said to link with his interest in the new technique of photography. The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense of composition all evidence the influence that both the Impressionist movement and modern photography, with its spontaneous images and off-kilter angles, had on his work.
Blurring the distinction between portraiture and genre pieces, he painted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau, in "The Orchestra of the Opera" (1868–69) as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of the painting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared the viewpoint to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that "it is Degas' fascination with the depiction of movement, including the movement of a spectator's eyes as during a random glance, that is properly speaking 'Impressionist'."
Degas's mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned, as Stuckey explains, that "his pictures could hardly have been executed by anyone with inadequate vision". The artist provided another clue when he described his predilection "to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them", and was in any case notoriously reluctant to consider a painting complete.

His interest in portraiture led Degas to study carefully the ways in which a person's social stature or form of employment may be revealed by their physiognomy, posture, dress, and other attributes. In his 1879 "Portraits, At the Stock Exchange", he portrayed a group of Jewish businessmen with a hint of anti-Semitism. In 1881 he exhibited two pastels, "Criminal Physiognomies", that depicted juvenile gang members recently convicted of murder in the "Abadie Affair". Degas had attended their trial with sketchbook in hand, and his numerous drawings of the defendants reveal his interest in the atavistic features thought by some 19th-century scientists to be evidence of innate criminality. In his paintings of dancers and laundresses, he reveals their occupations not only by their dress and activities but also by their body type: his ballerinas exhibit an athletic physicality, while his laundresses are heavy and solid.
By the later 1870s Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of oil on canvas, but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color.

In the mid-1870s he also returned to the medium of etching, which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with lithography and monotype.

He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s.

He was especially fascinated by the effects produced by monotype and frequently reworked the printed images with pastel. By 1880, sculpture had become one more strand to Degas's continuing endeavor to explore different media, although the artist displayed only one sculpture publicly during his lifetime.
These changes in media engendered the paintings that Degas would produce in later life. Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselves with towels, combing their hair, and bathing (see: "After the Bath, Woman drying herself"). The strokes that model the form are scribbled more freely than before; backgrounds are simplified.

The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form. Except for his characteristically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with the figure, the pictures created in this late period of his life bear little superficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point of fact, these paintings—created late in his life and after the heyday of the Impressionist movement—most vividly use the coloristic techniques of Impressionism.

For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio, either from memory, photographs, or live models. The figure remained his primary subject; his few landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. It was not unusual for him to repeat a subject many times, varying the composition or treatment. He was a deliberative artist whose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were prepared, calculated, practiced, developed in stages. They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each part to the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasion for infinite reflection and experiment." Degas himself explained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement".

Degas created a substantial number of other sculptures during a span of four decades, but they remained unseen by the public until a posthumous exhibition in 1918. Neither "The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" nor any of Degas's other sculptures were cast in bronze during the artist's lifetime. Degas scholars have agreed that the sculptures were not created as aids to painting, although the artist habitually explored ways of linking graphic art and oil painting, drawing and pastel, sculpture and photography. Degas assigned the same significance to sculpture as to drawing: "Drawing is a way of thinking, modelling another".

After Degas's death, his heirs found in his studio 150 wax sculptures, many in disrepair. They consulted foundry owner Adrien Hébrard, who concluded that 74 of the waxes could be cast in bronze. It is assumed that, except for the "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen", all Degas bronzes worldwide are cast from "" (i.e., cast from bronze masters). A "surmoulage" bronze is a bit smaller, and shows less surface detail, than its original bronze mold. The Hébrard Foundry cast the bronzes from 1919 until 1936, and closed down in 1937, shortly before Hébrard's death.

In 2004, a little-known group of 73 plaster casts, more or less closely resembling Degas's original wax sculptures, was presented as having been discovered among the materials bought by the Airaindor Foundry (later known as Airaindor-Valsuani) from Hébrard's descendants. Bronzes cast from these plasters were issued between 2004 and 2016 by Airaindor-Valsuani in editions inconsistently marked and thus of unknown size. There has been substantial controversy concerning the authenticity of these plasters as well as the circumstances and date of their creation as proposed by their promoters. While several museum and academic professionals accept them as presented, most of the recognized Degas scholars have declined to comment.

Degas, who believed that "the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown", lived an outwardly uneventful life. In company he was known for his wit, which could often be cruel. He was characterized as an "old curmudgeon" by the novelist George Moore, and he deliberately cultivated his reputation as a misanthropic bachelor. Profoundly conservative in his political opinions, he opposed all social reforms and found little to admire in such technological advances as the telephone. He fired a model upon learning she was Protestant. Although Degas painted a number of Jewish subjects from 1865 to 1870, his anti-Semitism became apparent by the mid-1870s. His 1879 painting "Portraits at the Stock Exchange" is widely regarded as anti-Semitic, with the facial features of the banker taken directly from the anti-Semitic cartoons rampant in Paris at the time.

The Dreyfus Affair, which divided Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, further intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic "Anti-Dreyfusards" until his death.

During his life, public reception of Degas's work ranged from admiration to contempt. As a promising artist in the conventional mode, Degas had a number of paintings accepted in the Salon between 1865 and 1870. These works received praise from Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and the critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary. He soon joined forces with the Impressionists, however, and rejected the rigid rules, judgments, and elitism of the Salon—just as the Salon and general public initially rejected the experimentalism of the Impressionists.

Degas's work was controversial, but was generally admired for its draftsmanship. His "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans", or "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years", which he displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, was probably his most controversial piece; some critics decried what they thought its "appalling ugliness" while others saw in it a "blossoming". In part Degas' originality consisted in disregarding the smooth, full surfaces and contours of classical sculpture ... [and] in garnishing his little statue with real hair and clothing made to scale like the accoutrements for a doll. These relatively "real" additions heightened the illusion, but they also posed searching questions, such as what can be referred to as "real" when art is concerned. The suite of pastels depicting nudes that Degas exhibited in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 produced "the most concentrated body of critical writing on the artist during his lifetime... The overall reaction was positive and laudatory".

Recognized as an important artist in his lifetime, Degas is now considered "one of the founders of Impressionism". Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest artists.

Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Degas's paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculptures are on prominent display in many museums, and have been the subject of many museum exhibitions and retrospectives. Recent exhibitions include "Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks" (The Morgan Library, 2010); "Picasso Looks at Degas" (Museu Picasso de Barcelona, 2010); "Degas and the Nude" (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2011); "Degas' Method" (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2013); "Degas's Little Dancer" (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2014) and "Degas: A passion for perfection" (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2017-2018).

Cassatt and Degas had a long period of collaboration. The two had studios close together, Cassatt at 19, rue Laval, (), Degas at 4, rue Frochot, (), less than a five-minute stroll apart, and Degas got into the habit of looking in at Cassatt's studio and offering her advice and helping her get models.

They had much in common: they shared similar tastes in art and literature, came from affluent backgrounds, had studied painting in Italy, and both were independent, never marrying. The degree of intimacy between them cannot be assessed now, as no letters survive, but it is unlikely they were in a relationship given their conservative social backgrounds and strong moral principles. Several of Vincent van Gogh's letters attest Degas' sexual continence. Degas introduced Cassatt to pastel and engraving, both of which Cassatt quickly mastered, while for her part Cassatt was instrumental in helping Degas sell his paintings and promoting his reputation in America.

Both regarded themselves as figure painters, and the art historian George Shackelford suggests they were influenced by the art critic Louis Edmond Duranty's appeal in his pamphlet "The New Painting" for a revitalization in figure painting: "Let us take leave of the stylized human body, which is treated like a vase. What we need is the characteristic modern person in his clothes, in the midst of his social surroundings, at home or out in the street."
After Cassatt's parents and sister Lydia joined Cassatt in Paris in 1877, Degas, Cassatt, and Lydia were often to be seen at the Louvre studying artworks together. Degas produced two prints, notable for their technical innovation, depicting Cassatt at the Louvre looking at artworks while Lydia reads a guidebook. These were destined for a prints journal planned by Degas (together with Camille Pissarro and others), which never came to fruition. Cassatt frequently posed for Degas, notably for his millinery series trying on hats.

Around 1884 Degas made a portrait in oils of Cassatt, "Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards". A "circa" 1880 "Self-Portrait" by Cassatt depicts her in the identical hat and dress, leading Griselda Pollock to speculate they were executed in a joint painting session in the early years of their acquaintance.

Cassatt and Degas worked most closely together in the fall and winter of 1879–80 when Cassatt was mastering her printmaking technique. Degas owned a small printing press, and by day she worked at his studio using his tools and press while in the evening she made studies for the etching plate the next day. However, in April 1880, Degas abruptly withdrew from the prints journal they had been collaborating on, and without his support the project folded. Degas' withdrawal piqued Cassatt who had worked hard at preparing a print, "In the Opera Box", in a large edition of fifty impressions, no doubt destined for the journal. Although Cassatt's warm feelings for Degas were to last her entire life, she never again worked with him as closely as she had over the prints journal. Mathews notes that she ceased executing her theater scenes at this time.

Degas was forthright in his views, as was Cassatt. They clashed over the Dreyfus affair (early in her career she had executed a portrait of the art collector Moyse Dreyfus, a relative of the court-martialled lieutenant at the center of the affair). Cassatt later expressed satisfaction at the irony of Lousine Havermeyer's 1915 joint exhibition of hers and Degas' work being held in aid of women's suffrage, equally capable of affectionately repeating Degas' antifemale comments as being estranged by them (when viewing her "Two Women Picking Fruit" for the first time, he had commented "No woman has the right to draw like that"). From the 1890s onwards their relationship took on a decidedly commercial aspect, as in general had Cassatt's other relations with the Impressionist circle; nevertheless they continued to visit each other until Degas' death in 1917.

Edgar Degas

At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classical art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.

Upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a constant worry to him.

As his financial situation improved through sales of his own work, he was able to indulge his passion for collecting works by artists he admired: old masters such as El Greco and such contemporaries as Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Édouard Brandon. Three artists he idolized, Ingres, Delacroix, and Daumier, were especially well represented in his collection.

In the late 1880s, Degas also developed a passion for photography. He photographed many of his friends, often by lamplight, as in his double portrait of Renoir and Mallarmé. Other photographs, depicting dancers and nudes, were used for reference in some of Degas's drawings and paintings.

As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due in part to his belief that a painter could have no personal life. The Dreyfus Affair controversy brought his anti-Semitic leanings to the fore and he broke with all his Jewish friends. His argumentative nature was deplored by Renoir, who said of him: "What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one of the last to go, but even I couldn't stay till the end."

Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that he continually belittled their practice of painting "en plein air".

You know what I think of people who work out in the open. If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.

In the mid-1870s he also returned to the medium of etching, which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with lithography and monotype.

He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s.

The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form. Except for his characteristically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with the figure, the pictures created in this late period of his life bear little superficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point of fact, these paintings—created late in his life and after the heyday of the Impressionist movement—most vividly use the coloristic techniques of Impressionism.

The Dreyfus Affair, which divided Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, further intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic "Anti-Dreyfusards" until his death.

Recognized as an important artist in his lifetime, Degas is now considered "one of the founders of Impressionism". Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest artists.

Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Cassatt and Degas had a long period of collaboration. The two had studios close together, Cassatt at 19, rue Laval, (), Degas at 4, rue Frochot, (), less than a five-minute stroll apart, and Degas got into the habit of looking in at Cassatt's studio and offering her advice and helping her get models.

Around 1884 Degas made a portrait in oils of Cassatt, "Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards". A "circa" 1880 "Self-Portrait" by Cassatt depicts her in the identical hat and dress, leading Griselda Pollock to speculate they were executed in a joint painting session in the early years of their acquaintance.


When did Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel take the name "Coco"?

Having learned to sew during her six years at Aubazine, Chanel found employment as a seamstress. When not sewing, she sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. Chanel made her stage debut singing at a "cafe-concert" (a popular entertainment venue of the era) in a Moulins pavilion, "La Rotonde". She was a "poseuse", a performer who entertained the crowd between star turns. The money earned was what they managed to accumulate when the plate was passed. It was at this time that Gabrielle acquired the name "Coco" when she spent her nights singing in the cabaret, often the song, "Who Has Seen Coco?" She often liked to say the nickname was given to her by her father. Others believe "Coco" came from "Ko Ko Ri Ko", and "Qui qu'a vu Coco", or it was an allusion to the French word for kept woman, "cocotte". As an entertainer, Chanel radiated a juvenile allure that tantalized the military habitués of the cabaret.

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and business woman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing, realizing her design aesthetic in jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product. She is the only fashion designer listed on "Time" magazine's. Chanel herself designed her famed interlocked-CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s.

Chanel's social connections encouraged a conservative personal outlook. Rumors arose about Chanel's activities during the German occupation of France during World War II, and she was criticized for being too close to the German occupiers: One of Chanel's liaisons was with a German diplomat, Baron ("Freiherr"). After the war, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator. After several post-war years in Switzerland, she returned to Paris and revived her fashion house. In 2011, Hal Vaughan published a book about Chanel based on newly declassified documents, revealing that she had collaborated with German intelligence activities. One plan in late-1943 was for her to carry an SS peace overture to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to end the war.

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in 1883 to mother, Eugénie Jeanne Devolle—known as Jeanne—a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. She was Jeanne's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, was born less than a year earlier. Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments, living a nomadic life, traveling to and from market towns. The family resided in rundown lodgings. In 1884, he married Jeanne Devolle, persuaded to do so by her family who had "united, effectively, to pay Albert to marry her."

At birth, Chanel's name was entered into the official registry as "Chasnel". Jeanne was too unwell to attend the registration, and Albert was registered as "travelling". With both parents absent, the infant's last name was misspelled, probably due to a clerical error. The couple had five children who survived—two boys and three girls—who lived crowded into a one-room lodging in the town of Brive-la-Gaillarde.

When Gabrielle was 12, her mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 32. Her father sent his two sons to work as farm laborers and sent his three daughters to the convent of Aubazine, which ran an orphanage. Its religious order, the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, was "founded to care for the poor and rejected, including running homes for abandoned and orphaned girls". It was a stark, frugal life, demanding strict discipline. Placement in the orphanage may have been the best thing for Coco's future because it is where she learned to sew. At age eighteen, Chanel, too old to remain at Aubazine, went to live in a boarding house for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins.

Later in life, Chanel would retell the story of her childhood somewhat differently; she would often include more glamorous accounts, which were generally untrue. She said that when her mother died, her father sailed for America to seek his fortune, and she was sent to live with two aunts. She also claimed to have been born a decade later than 1883 and that her mother had died when she was much younger than 12.

In 1906, Chanel worked in the spa resort town of Vichy. Vichy boasted a profusion of concert halls, theatres, and cafés where she hoped to achieve success as a performer. Chanel's youth and physical charms impressed those for whom she auditioned, but her singing voice was marginal and she failed to find stage work. Obliged to find employment, she took work at the "Grande Grille", where as a "donneuse d'eau" she was one whose job was to dispense glasses of the purportedly curative mineral water for which Vichy was renowned. When the Vichy season ended, Chanel returned to Moulins, and her former haunt "La Rotonde". She now realised that a serious stage career was not in her future.

At Moulins, Chanel met a young French ex-cavalry officer and textile heir, Étienne Balsan. At the age of twenty-three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d’Alençon as his new favorite. For the next three years, she lived with him in his château Royallieu near Compiègne, an area known for its wooded equestrian paths and the hunting life. It was a lifestyle of self-indulgence. Balsan's wealth allowed the cultivation of a social set that reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites, with all the implied accompanying decadence. Balsan showered Chanel with the baubles of "the rich life"—diamonds, dresses, and pearls. Biographer Justine Picardie, in her 2010 study "Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life", suggests that the fashion designer's nephew, André Palasse, supposedly the only child of her sister Julia-Berthe who had committed suicide, was Chanel's child by Balsan.

In 1908, Chanel began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel. In later years, Chanel reminisced of this time in her life: "two gentlemen were outbidding for my hot little body." Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed Chanel in an apartment in Paris. and financed her first shops. It is said that Capel's sartorial style influenced the conception of the Chanel look. The bottle design for Chanel No. 5 had two probable origins, both attributable to her association with Capel. It is believed Chanel adapted the rectangular, beveled lines of the Charvet toiletry bottles he carried in his leather traveling case or she adapted the design of the whiskey decanter Capel used. She so much admired it that she wished to reproduce it in "exquisite, expensive, delicate glass". The couple spent time together at fashionable resorts such as Deauville, but despite Chanel's hopes that they would settle together, Capel was never faithful to her. Their affair lasted nine years. Even after Capel married an English aristocrat, Lady Diana Wyndham in 1918, he did not completely break off with Chanel. He died in a car accident on 21 December 1919. A roadside memorial at the site of Capel's accident is said to have been commissioned by Chanel. Twenty-five years after the event, Chanel, then residing in Switzerland, confided to her friend, Paul Morand, "His death was a terrible blow to me. In losing Capel, I lost everything. What followed was not a life of happiness, I have to say."

Chanel had begun designing hats while living with Balsan, initially as a diversion that evolved into a commercial enterprise. She became a licensed milliner in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 rue Cambon, Paris, named "Chanel Modes". As this location already housed an established clothing business, Chanel sold only her millinery creations at this address. Chanel's millinery career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat wore her hats in Fernand Nozière's play "Bel Ami" in 1912. Subsequently, Dorziat modelled Chanel's hats again in photographs published in "Les Modes".

In 1913, Chanel opened a boutique in Deauville, financed by Arthur Capel, where she introduced deluxe casual clothing suitable for leisure and sport. The fashions were constructed from humble fabrics such as jersey and tricot, at the time primarily used for men's underwear. The location was a prime one, in the center of town on a fashionable street. Here Chanel sold hats, jackets, sweaters, and the "marinière", the sailor blouse. Chanel had the dedicated support of two family members, her sister Antoinette, and her paternal aunt Adrienne, who was of a similar age. Adrienne and Antoinette were recruited to model Chanel's designs; on a daily basis the two women paraded through the town and on its boardwalks, advertising the Chanel creations.

Chanel, determined to re-create the success she enjoyed in Deauville, opened an establishment in Biarritz in 1915. Biarritz, on the Côte Basque, close to wealthy Spanish clients, was a playground for the moneyed set and those exiled from their native countries by the war. The Biarritz shop was installed not as a storefront, but in a villa opposite the casino. After one year of operation, the business proved to be so lucrative that in 1916 Chanel was able to reimburse Capel's original investment. In Biarritz Chanel met an expatriate aristocrat, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia. They had a romantic interlude, and maintained a close association for many years afterward. By 1919, Chanel was registered as a "couturière" and established her "maison de couture" at 31 rue Cambon, Paris.

In 1918, Chanel purchased the building at 31 rue Cambon, in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris. In 1921, she opened an early incarnation of a fashion boutique, featuring clothing, hats, and accessories, later expanded to offer jewellery and fragrances. By 1927, Chanel owned five properties on the rue Cambon, buildings numbered 23 to 31.

In the spring of 1920 (approximately May), Chanel was introduced to the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. During the summer, Chanel discovered that the Stravinsky family sought a place to live, having left the Soviet Union after the war. She invited them to her new home, "Bel Respiro", in the Paris suburb of "Garches", until they could find a suitable residence. They arrived at "Bel Respiro" during the second week of September and remained until May 1921. Chanel also guaranteed the new (1920) Ballets Russes production of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" ('The Rite of Spring') against financial loss with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev, said to be 300,000 francs. In addition to turning out her couture collections, Chanel threw herself into designing dance costumes for the Ballets Russes. In the years 1923–1937, she collaborated on productions choreographed by Diaghilev and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, notably "Le Train bleu", a dance-opera; "Orphée" and "Oedipe Roi".

In 1922, at the Longchamps races, Théophile Bader, founder of the Paris Galeries Lafayette, introduced Chanel to businessman Pierre Wertheimer. Bader was interested in selling Chanel No. 5 in his department store. In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors since 1917 of the eminent perfume and cosmetics house Bourjois. They created a corporate entity, "Parfums Chanel", and the Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for the production, marketing, and distribution of Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers would receive seventy percent of the profits, and Théophile Bader twenty percent. For ten percent of the stock, Chanel licensed her name to "Parfums Chanel" and withdrew from involvement in business operations. Later, unhappy with the arrangement, Chanel worked for more than twenty years to gain full control of "Parfums Chanel". She said that Pierre Wertheimer was "the bandit who screwed me".

One of Chanel's longest enduring associations was with Misia Sert, a member of the bohemian elite in Paris and wife of Spanish painter José-Maria Sert. It is said that theirs was an immediate bond of kindred souls, and Misia was attracted to Chanel by "her genius, lethal wit, sarcasm and maniacal destructiveness, which intrigued and appalled everyone". Both women were convent schooled, and maintained a friendship of shared interests and confidences. They also shared drug use. By 1935, Chanel had become a habitual drug user, injecting herself with morphine on a daily basis, a habit she maintained to the end of her life. According to Chandler Burr's "The Emperor of Scent", Luca Turin related an apocryphal story in circulation that Chanel was "called Coco because she threw the most fabulous cocaine parties in Paris".

The writer Colette, who moved in the same social circles as Chanel, provided a whimsical description of Chanel at work in her atelier, which appeared in "Prisons et Paradis" (1932). "If every human face bears a resemblance to some animal, then Mademoiselle Chanel is a small black bull. That tuft of curly black hair, the attribute of bull-calves, falls over her brow all the way to the eyelids and dances with every maneuver of her head."

In 1923, Vera Bate Lombardi, (born Sarah Gertrude Arkwright), reputedly the illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge, afforded Chanel entry into the highest levels of British aristocracy. It was an elite group of associations revolving around such figures as politician Winston Churchill, aristocrats such as the Duke of Westminster, and royals such as Edward, Prince of Wales. In Monte Carlo in 1923, at age forty, Chanel was introduced by Lombardi to the vastly wealthy Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, known to his intimates as "Bendor". The duke lavished Chanel with extravagant jewels, costly art, and a home in London's prestigious Mayfair district. His affair with Chanel lasted ten years.

The duke, an outspoken anti-Semite, intensified Chanel's inherent antipathy toward Jews. He shared with her an expressed homophobia. In 1946, Chanel was quoted by her friend and confidant, Paul Morand, "Homosexuals?... I have seen young women ruined by these awful queers: drugs, divorce, scandal. They will use any means to destroy a competitor and to wreak vengeance on a woman. The queers want to be women—but they are lousy women. They are charming!

Coinciding with her introduction to the duke, was her introduction, again through Lombardi, to Lombardi's cousin, the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII. The prince allegedly was smitten with Chanel and pursued her in spite of her involvement with the Duke of Westminster. Gossip had it that he visited Chanel in her apartment and requested that she call him "David", a privilege reserved only for his closest friends and family. Years later, Diana Vreeland, editor of "Vogue", would insist that "the passionate, focused and fiercely independent Chanel, a virtual tour de force," and the Prince "had a great romantic moment together".

In 1927, the Duke of Westminster gave Chanel a parcel of land he had purchased in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera. Chanel built a villa here, which she called "La Pausa" ('restful pause'), hiring the architect Robert Streitz. Streitz's concept for the staircase and patio contained design elements inspired by Aubazine, the orphanage where Chanel spent her youth. When asked why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster, she is supposed to have said: "There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel."

In 1931, while in Monte Carlo Chanel became acquainted with Samuel Goldwyn. She was introduced through a mutual friend, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin to the last czar of Russia, Nicolas II. Goldwyn offered Chanel a tantalizing proposition. For the sum of a million dollars (approximately US$75 million today), he would bring her to Hollywood twice a year to design costumes for MGM stars. Chanel accepted the offer. Accompanying her on her first trip to Hollywood was her friend, Misia Sert.

En route to California from New York, traveling in a white train carriage luxuriously outfitted for her use, Chanel was interviewed by "Colliers" magazine in 1932. She said that she had agreed to go to Hollywood to "see what the pictures have to offer me and what I have to offer the pictures." Chanel designed the clothing worn on screen by Gloria Swanson, in "Tonight or Never" (1931), and for Ina Claire in "The Greeks Had a Word for Them" (1932). Both Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich became private clients.

Her experience with American movie making left Chanel with a dislike for Hollywood's film business and a distaste for the film world's culture, which she called "infantile". Chanel's verdict was that "Hollywood is the capital of bad taste... and it is vulgar." Ultimately, her design aesthetic did not translate well to film. "The New Yorker" speculated that Chanel left Hollywood because "they told her her dresses weren't sensational enough. She made a lady look like a lady. Hollywood wants a lady to look like two ladies." Chanel went on to design the costumes for several French films, including Jean Renoir's 1939 film "La Règle du jeu", in which she was credited as "La Maison Chanel". Chanel introduced the left-wing Renoir to Luchino Visconti, aware that the shy Italian hoped to work in film. Renoir was favorably impressed by Visconti and brought him in to work on his next film project.

Chanel was the mistress of some of the most influential men of her time, but she never married. She had significant relationships with the poet Pierre Reverdy and the illustrator and designer Paul Iribe. After her romance with Reverdy ended in 1926, they maintained a friendship that lasted some forty years. It is postulated that the legendary maxims attributed to Chanel and published in periodicals were crafted under the mentorship of Reverdy—a collaborative effort.

A review of her correspondence reveals a complete contradiction between the clumsiness of Chanel the letter writer and the talent of Chanel as a composer of maxims... After correcting the handful of aphorisms that Chanel wrote about her "métier", Reverdy added to this collection of "Chanelisms" a series of thoughts of a more general nature, some touching on life and taste, others on allure and love.

Her involvement with Iribe was a deep one until his sudden death in 1935. Iribe and Chanel shared the same reactionary politics, Chanel financing Iribe's monthly, ultra-nationalist and anti-republican newsletter, "Le Témoin", which encouraged a fear of foreigners and preached anti-Semitism. In 1936, one year after "Le Témoin" ceased publication, Chanel veered to the opposite end of the ideological continuum by financing Pierre Lestringuez's radical left-wing magazine "Futur".

The Chanel couture was a lucrative business enterprise, by 1935 employing 4,000 people. As the 1930s progressed, Chanel's place on the throne of haute couture was threatened. The boyish look and the short skirts of the 1920s flapper seemed to disappear overnight. Chanel's designs for film stars in Hollywood were not successful and had not enhanced her reputation as expected. More significantly, Chanel's star had been eclipsed by her premier rival, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Schiaparelli's innovative designs, replete with playful references to surrealism, was garnering critical acclaim and generating enthusiasm in the fashion world. Feeling she was losing her avant-garde edge, Chanel collaborated with Jean Cocteau on his theatre piece "Oedipe Rex". The costumes she designed were mocked and critically lambasted: "Wrapped in bandages the actors looked like ambulant mummies or victims of some terrible accident." She was also involved in the costuming of "Baccanale", a Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo production. The designs were made by Salvador Dalí. However, due to the declaration of war by Great Britain on 3 September 1939, the ballet was forced to leave London. They left the costumes in Europe and were re-made, according to Dali's initial designs, by Karinska.

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops, maintaining her apartment situated above the couture house at 31 Rue de Cambon. She said that it was not a time for fashion; as a result of her action, 4,000 female employees lost their jobs. Her biographer Vaughan suggests that Chanel used the outbreak of war as an opportunity to retaliate against those workers who, lobbying for higher wages and shorter work hours, had closed her business operation against her will during a general labor strike in France in 1936. In closing her couture house, Chanel made a definitive statement of her political views. Her dislike of Jews, reportedly inculcated by her convent years and sharpened by her association with society elites, had solidified her beliefs. She shared with many of her circle a conviction that Jews were a threat to Europe because of the Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union.

During the German occupation, Chanel resided at the Hotel Ritz. It was noteworthy as the preferred place of residence for upper-echelon German military staff. Her romantic liaison with Baron ("Freiherr"), a German diplomat in Paris and former Prussian Army officer and Attorney General who had been an operative in military intelligence since 1920, eased her arrangements at the Ritz.

During Chanel's affair with the Duke of Westminster in the 1930s, her style began to reflect her personal emotions. Her inability to reinvent the little black dress was a sign of such reality. She began to design a “less is more” aesthetic.

“Sleeping with the Enemy, Coco Chanel and the Secret War” written by Hal Vaughan further solidifies the consistencies of the French intelligent documents released by describing Coco as a “vicious anti-Semite” who praised Hitler.

World War II, specifically the Nazi seizure of all Jewish-owned property and business enterprises, provided Chanel with the opportunity to gain the full monetary fortune generated by "Parfums Chanel" and its most profitable product, Chanel No. 5. The directors of "Parfums Chanel", the Wertheimers, were Jewish. Chanel used her position as an "Aryan" to petition German officials to legalize her claim to sole ownership.

"I have," she wrote, "an indisputable right of priority... the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business ... are disproportionate ... [and] you can help to repair in part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of these seventeen years."

Chanel was not aware that the Wertheimers, anticipating the forthcoming Nazi mandates against Jews had, in May 1940, legally turned control of "Parfums Chanel" over to Félix Amiot, a Christian French businessman and industrialist. At war's end, Amiot returned "Parfums Chanel" to the hands of the Wertheimers.

During the period directly following the end of World War II, the business world watched with interest and some apprehension the ongoing legal wrestle for control of "Parfums Chanel". Interested parties in the proceedings were cognizant that Chanel's Nazi affiliations during wartime, if made public knowledge, would seriously threaten the reputation and status of the Chanel brand. "Forbes" magazine summarized the dilemma faced by the Wertheimers: [it is Pierre Wertheimer's worry] how "a legal fight might illuminate Chanel's wartime activities and wreck her image—and his business."

Chanel hired René de Chambrun, Vichy France Prime Minister Pierre Laval's son-in-law, as her lawyer to sue Wertheimer. Ultimately, the Wertheimers and Chanel came to a mutual accommodation, renegotiating the original 1924 contract. On 17 May 1947, Chanel received wartime profits from the sale of Chanel No. 5, in an amount equivalent to some nine million dollars in twenty-first century valuation. Her future share would be two percent of all Chanel No. 5 sales worldwide. The financial benefit to her would be enormous. Her earnings were projected at $25 million a year, making her at the time one of the richest women in the world. In addition, Pierre Wertheimer agreed to an unusual stipulation proposed by Chanel herself. Wertheimer agreed to pay all of Chanel's living expenses—from the trivial to the large—for the rest of her life.

Declassified archival documents unearthed by biographer Hal Vaughan reveal that the French Préfecture de Police had a document on Chanel in which she was described as "Couturier and perfumer. Pseudonym: Westminster. Agent reference: F 7124. Signalled as suspect in the file" ("Pseudonyme: Westminster. Indicatif d'agent: F 7124. Signalée comme suspecte au fichier"). For Vaughan, this was a piece of revelatory information linking Chanel to German intelligence operations. Anti-Nazi activist Serge Klarsfeld declared, "It is not because Chanel had a spy number that she was necessarily personally implicated. Some informers had numbers without being aware of it." (""Ce n'est pas parce que Coco Chanel avait un numéro d'espion qu'elle était nécessairement impliquée personnellement. Certains indicateurs avaient des numéros sans le savoir"").

Vaughan establishes that Chanel committed herself to the German cause as early as 1941 and worked for General Walter Schellenberg, chief of the German intelligence agency "Sicherheitsdienst" (Security Service) and the military intelligence spy network "Abwehr" (Counterintelligence) at the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt") in Berlin. At the end of the war, Schellenberg was tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment for war crimes. He was released in 1951 owing to incurable liver disease and took refuge in Italy. Chanel paid for Schellenberg's medical care and living expenses, financially supported his wife and family, and paid for Schellenberg's funeral upon his death in 1952.

Suspicions of Coco Chanel's involvement first began when German tanks entered Paris and began the Nazi occupation. Chanel immediately sought refuge in the deluxe Hotel Ritz, which was also used as the headquarters of the German military. It was at the Hotel Ritz where she fell in love with Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage working in the German embassy close to the Gestapo. When the Nazi occupation of France began, Chanel decided to close her store, claiming a patriotic motivation behind such decision. However, when she moved into the same Hotel Ritz that was housing the German military, her motivations became clear to many. While many women in France were punished for “horizontal collaboration” with German officers, Chanel faced no such action. At the time of the French liberation in 1944, Chanel left in a note in her store window explaining Chanel No. 5 to be free to all GIs. During this time, she fled to Switzerland to avoid criminal charges for her collaborations as a Nazi spy.

In late 2014, documents were declassified and released by French intelligence agencies confirming Coco Chanel's role with Germany in World War II. Working as a spy, Chanel was directly involved in a plan for the Third Reich to take control of Madrid. Such documents identify Chanel as an agent in the German military intelligence, the Abwehr. Chanel visited Madrid in 1943 to convince the British ambassador to Spain, friend to Winston Churchill, about a possible German surrender once the war was leaning towards an Allied victory. One of the most prominent missions she was involved in was Operation Modellhut, ('Operation Model Hat'). Her duty was so act as a messenger from Hitler's Foreign Intelligence to Winston Churchill to prove that some of the Third Reich attempted peace with the Allies.

In 1943, Chanel travelled to the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt") in Berlin—the "lion's den"—with her liaison and "old friend", the German Embassy in Paris press attaché Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, a former Prussian Army officer and attorney general, who was also known as "Sparrow" among his friends and colleagues. Dincklage was also a collaborator for the German "Sicherheitsdienst" (Security Service); his superiors being Walter Schellenberg and Alexander Waag in Berlin. Chanel and Dincklage were to report to Walter Schellenberg at the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt") with a ludicrous plan that Chanel had proposed to Dincklage: she, Coco Chanel, wants to meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and persuade him to negotiate with the Germans. In late-1943 or early-1944, Chanel and her SS superior, Schellenberg, who had a weakness for unconventional schemes, devised a plan to get Britain to consider a separate peace to be negotiated by the SS. When interrogated by British intelligence at war's end, Schellenberg maintained that Chanel was "a person who knew Churchill sufficiently to undertake political negotiations with him". For this mission, code named "Operation Modellhut", they also recruited Vera Bate Lombardi. Count Joseph von Ledebur-Wicheln, a Nazi agent who defected to the British Secret Service in 1944, recalled a meeting he had with Dincklage in early 1943, in which the baron had suggested including Lombardi as a courier. Dincklage purportedly said, "The "Abwehr" had first to bring to France a young Italian woman [Lombardi] Coco Chanel was attached to because of her lesbian vices..."

Unaware of the machinations of Schellenberg and Chanel, Lombardi was led to believe that the forthcoming journey to Spain would be a business trip exploring the potential for establishing Chanel couture in Madrid. Lombardi acted as intermediary, delivering a letter written by Chanel to Winston Churchill, to be forwarded to him via the British Embassy in Madrid. Schellenberg's SS liaison officer, Captain Walter Kutschmann, acted as bagman, "told to deliver a large sum of money to Chanel in Madrid". Ultimately, the mission proved a failure for the Germans. British intelligence files reveal that the plan collapsed after Lombardi, on arrival in Madrid, proceeded to denounce Chanel and others to the British Embassy as Nazi spies.

In September 1944, Chanel was interrogated by the Free French Purge Committee, the "épuration". The committee had no documented evidence of her collaborative activities and was obliged to release her. According to Chanel's grand-niece, Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie, when Chanel returned home she said, "Churchill had me freed".

The extent of Churchill's intervention for Chanel after the war became a subject of gossip and speculation. Some historians claimed that people worried that, if Chanel were forced to testify about her own activities at trial, she would expose the pro-Nazi sympathies and activities of certain top-level British officials, members of the society elite, and the royal family. Vaughan writes that some claim that Churchill instructed Duff Cooper, British ambassador to the French provisional government, to protect Chanel.

Requested to appear in Paris before investigators in 1949, Chanel left her retreat in Switzerland to confront testimony given against her at the war crime trial of Baron Louis de Vaufreland, a French traitor and highly placed German intelligence agent. Chanel denied all the accusations. She offered the presiding judge, Leclercq, a character reference: "I could arrange for a declaration to come from Mr. Duff Cooper."

Chanel's friend and biographer Marcel Haedrich said of her wartime interaction with the Nazi regime: "If one took seriously the few disclosures that Mademoiselle Chanel allowed herself to make about those black years of the occupation, one's teeth would be set on edge."

Churchill and Chanel's friendship marks its origin in the1920's with the eruption of Chanel's scandalous beginning when falling in love with the Duke of Westminster. Churchill's intervention at the end of the war prevented Chanel's punishment for spy collaborations, and ultimately salvaged her legacy.

When Vaughan's book was published in August 2011, his disclosure of the contents of recently declassified military intelligence documents generated considerable controversy about Chanel's activities. The House of Chanel issued a statement, portions of which were published by several media outlets. Chanel corporate "refuted the claim" (of espionage), while acknowledging that company officials had read only media excerpts of the book.

The Chanel Group stated, "What is certain is that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the War. Clearly it wasn't the best period to have a love story with a German even if Baron von Dincklage was English by his mother and she (Chanel) knew him before the War."

In an interview given to the Associated Press, author Vaughan discussed the unexpected turn of his research, "I was looking for something else and I come across this document saying 'Chanel is a Nazi agent'...Then I really started hunting through all of the archives, in the United States, in London, in Berlin and in Rome and I come across not one, but 20, 30, 40 absolutely solid archival materials on Chanel and her lover, Hans Günther von Dincklage, who was a professional Abwehr spy."

Vaughan also addressed the discomfort many felt with the revelations provided in his book: "A lot of people in this world don't want the iconic figure of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, one of France's great cultural idols, destroyed. This is definitely something that a lot of people would have preferred to put aside, to forget, to just go on selling Chanel scarves and jewellery."

In 1945, Chanel moved to Switzerland, where she lived for several years, part of the time with Dincklage. In 1953 she sold her villa "La Pausa" on the French Riviera to the publisher and translator Emery Reves. Five rooms from La Pausa have been replicated at the Dallas Museum of Art, to house the Reves' art collection as well as pieces of furniture belonging to Chanel.

Unlike the pre-war era, when women reigned as the premier couturiers, Christian Dior achieved success in 1947 with his "New Look", and a cadre of male designers achieved recognition: Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Robert Piguet, and Jacques Fath. Chanel was convinced that women would ultimately rebel against the aesthetic favored by the male couturiers, what she called "illogical" design: the "waist cinchers, padded bras, heavy skirts, and stiffened jackets".

At more than 70 years old, after having her couture house closed for 15 years, she felt the time was right for her to re-enter the fashion world. The revival of her couture house in 1954 was fully financed by Chanel's opponent in the perfume battle, Pierre Wertheimer. When Chanel came out with her comeback collection in 1954, the French press were cautious due to her collaboration during the war and the controversy of the collection. However, the American and British press saw it as a "breakthrough", bringing together fashion and youth in a new way. Bettina Ballard, the influential editor of the US "Vogue", remained loyal to Chanel, however, and featured the model Marie-Hélène Arnaud—the "face of Chanel" in the 1950s—in the March 1954 issue, photographed by Henry Clarke, wearing three outfits: a red dress with a V-neck paired with ropes of pearls; a tiered seersucker evening gown; and a navy jersey mid-calf suit. Arnaud wore this outfit, "with its slightly padded, square shouldered cardigan jacket, two patch pockets and sleeves that unbuttoned back to reveal crisp white cuffs", above "a white muslin blouse with a perky collar and bow [that] stayed perfectly in place with small tabs that buttoned onto the waistline of an easy A-line skirt." Ballard had bought the suit herself, which gave "an overwhelming impression of insouciant, youthful elegance", and orders for the clothing that Arnaud had modelled soon poured in from the US.

According to Edmonde Charles-Roux, Chanel had become tyrannical and extremely lonely late in life. In her last years she was sometimes accompanied by Jacques Chazot and her confidante Lilou Marquand. A faithful friend was also the Brazilian Aimée de Heeren, who lived in Paris four months a year at the nearby Hôtel Meurice. The former rivals shared happy memories of times with the Duke of Westminster. They frequently strolled together through central Paris.

As 1971 began, Chanel was 87 years old, tired, and ailing. She carried out her usual routine of preparing the spring catalogue. She had gone for a long drive the afternoon of Saturday, 9 January. Soon after, feeling ill, she went to bed early. She died on Sunday, 10 January 1971, at the Hotel Ritz, where she had resided for more than 30 years.
Her funeral was held at the Église de la Madeleine; her fashion models occupied the first seats during the ceremony and her coffin was covered with white flowers—camellias, gardenias, orchids, azaleas and a few red roses. She died in her infamous style, announcing: "You see, this is how you die."

Her grave is in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Most of her estate was inherited by her nephew André Palasse, who lived in Switzerland, and his two daughters, who lived in Paris.

Although Chanel was viewed as a prominent figure of luxury fashion during her life, Chanel's influence has been examined further post death in 1971. She continued to spend her final years in luxury evermore at her magnificent Ritz apartment. When Chanel died, the first lady of France, Mme, Pompidou organized a hero's tribute. Soon damaging documents from French intelligence agencies were released that outlined Chanel's war time involvements that quickly ended her monumental funeral plans.

As early as 1915, "Harper's Bazaar" raved over Chanel's designs: "The woman who hasn't at least one Chanel is hopelessly out of fashion... This season the name Chanel is on the lips of every buyer." Chanel's ascendancy was the official deathblow to the corseted female silhouette. The frills, fuss, and constraints endured by earlier generations of women were now passé; under her influence—gone were the ""aigrettes", long hair, hobble skirts". Her design aesthetic redefined the fashionable woman in the post World War I era. The Chanel trademark look was of youthful ease, liberated physicality, and unencumbered sportive confidence.

The horse culture and penchant for hunting so passionately pursued by the elites, especially the British, fired Chanel's imagination. Her own enthusiastic indulgence in the sporting life led to clothing designs informed by those activities. From her excursions on water with the yachting world, she appropriated the clothing associated with nautical pursuits: the horizontal striped shirt, bell-bottom pants, crewneck sweaters, and "espadrille" shoes—all traditionally worn by sailors and fishermen.

Chanel's initial triumph was her innovative use of jersey, a machine knit material manufactured for her by the firm Rodier, and a fabric traditionally relegated to the manufacture of undergarments. Chanel's early wool jersey traveling suit consisted of a cardigan jacket and pleated skirt, paired with a low-belted pullover top. This ensemble, worn with low-heeled shoes, became the casual look in expensive women's wear. Prior to this, jersey tended to be used primarily in hosiery and for sportswear (tennis, golf, and beach attire). Considered too "ordinary" to be used in couture, it was also disliked by designers because the knit structure made it difficult to handle compared to woven fabrics.

Chanel's introduction of jersey to high-fashion worked well for two reasons: First, the war had caused a shortage of other materials, and second, women began desiring simpler and more practical clothes. Her fluid jersey suits and dresses were created for practicality and allowed for free movement. This was greatly appreciated at the time because women were working for the war effort as nurses, in civil service, and in factories. Their jobs involved physical activity and they had to ride trains, buses, and bicycles to get to work. They desired outfits that did not give way easily and could be put on without the help of servants.

Designers such as Paul Poiret and Fortuny introduced ethnic references into haute couture in the 1900s and early 1910s. Chanel continued this trend with Slav-inspired designs in the early 1920s. The beading and embroidery on her garments at this time was exclusively executed by Kitmir, an embroidery house founded by an exiled Russian aristocrat, the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who was the sister of Chanel's erstwhile lover, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. Kitmir's fusion of oriental stitching with stylised folk motifs was highlighted in Chanel's early collections. One 1922 evening dress came with a matching embroidered 'babushka' headscarf. In addition to the headscarf, Chanel clothing from this period featured square-neck, long belted blouses alluding to Russian "muzhiks" (peasant) attire known as the "roubachka". Evening designs were often embroidered with sparkling crystal and black jet embroidery.

First introduced in 1923, the Chanel tweed suit was designed for comfort and practicality. It consisted of a jacket and skirt in supple and light wool or mohair tweed, and a blouse and jacket lining in jersey or silk. Chanel did not stiffen the material or use shoulder pads, as was common in contemporary fashion. She cut the jackets on the straight grain, without adding bust darts. This allowed for quick and easy movement. She designed the neckline to leave the neck comfortably free and added functional pockets. For a higher level of comfort, the skirt had a grosgrain stay around the waist, instead of a belt. More importantly, meticulous attention was placed on detail during fittings. Measurements were taken of a customer in a standing position with arms folded at shoulder height. Chanel conducted tests with models, having them walk around, step up to a platform as if climbing stairs of an imaginary bus, and bend as if getting into a low-slung sports car. Chanel wanted to make sure women could do all of these things while wearing her suit, without accidentally exposing parts of their body they wanted covered. Each client would have repeated adjustments until their suit was comfortable enough for them to perform daily activities with comfort and ease.

The camellia had an established association used in Alexandre Dumas' literary work, "La Dame aux Camélias" (The Lady of the Camellias). Its heroine and her story had resonated for Chanel since her youth. The flower was associated with the courtesan, who would wear a camellia to advertise her availability. The camellia came to be identified with The House of Chanel; the designer first used it in 1933 as a decorative element on a white-trimmed black suit.

After the jersey suit, the concept of the little black dress is often cited as a Chanel contribution to the fashion lexicon, a style still worn to this day. In 1912–1913, the actress Suzanne Orlandi was one of the first women to wear a Chanel little black dress, in velvet with a white collar. In 1920, Chanel herself vowed that, while observing an audience at the opera, she would dress all women in black.

In 1926, the American edition of "Vogue" published an image of a Chanel little black dress with long sleeves, dubbing it the "garçonne" ('little boy' look). "Vogue" predicted that such a simple yet chic design would become a virtual uniform for women of taste, famously comparing its basic lines to the ubiquitous and no less widely accessible Ford automobile. The spare look generated widespread criticism from male journalists, who complained: "no more bosom, no more stomach, no more rump... Feminine fashion of this moment in the 20th century will be baptized lop off everything." The popularity of the little black dress can be attributed in part to the timing of its introduction. The 1930s was the Great Depression era, when women needed affordable fashion. Chanel boasted that she had enabled the non-wealthy to "walk around like millionaires". Chanel started making little black dresses in wool or chenille for the day and in satin, crêpe or velvet for the evening.

Chanel proclaimed "I imposed black; it's still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around."

Chanel introduced a line of jewellery that was a conceptual innovation, as her designs and materials incorporated both costume jewelry and fine gem stones. This was revolutionary in an era when jewellery was strictly categorized into either fine or costume jewellery. Her inspirations were global, often inspired by design traditions of the Orient and Egypt. Wealthy clients who did not wish to display their costly jewellery in public could wear Chanel creations to impress others.

In 1933, designer Paul Iribe collaborated with Chanel in the creation of extravagant jewellery pieces commissioned by the International Guild of Diamond Merchants. The collection, executed exclusively in diamonds and platinum, was exhibited for public viewing and drew a large audience; some 3,000 attendees were recorded in a one-month period.

As an antidote for "vrais bijoux en toc", the obsession with costly, fine jewels, Chanel turned costume jewellery into a coveted accessory—especially when worn in grand displays, as she did. Originally inspired by the opulent jewels and pearls given to her by aristocratic lovers, Chanel raided her own jewel vault and partnered with Duke Fulco di Verdura to launch a House of Chanel jewellery line. A white enameled cuff featuring a jeweled Maltese cross was Chanel's personal favourite; it has become an icon of the Verdura–Chanel collaboration. The fashionable and wealthy loved the creations and made the line wildly successful. Chanel said, "It's disgusting to walk around with millions around the neck because one happens to be rich. I only like fake jewellery... because it's provocative."

In 1929 Chanel introduced a handbag inspired by soldier's bags. It's thin shoulder strap allowed the user to keep her hands free.Following her comeback, Chanel updated the design in February 1955, creating what would become the "2.55" (named for the date of its creation). Whilst details of the classic bag have been reworked, such as the 1980s update by Karl Lagerfeld when the clasp and lock were redesigned to incorporate the Chanel logo and leather was interlaced through the shoulder chain, the bag has retained its original basic form. In 2005, the Chanel firm released an exact replica of the original 1955 bag to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its creation.

The bag's design was informed by Chanel's convent days and her love of the sporting world. The chain used for the strap echoed the "chatelaines" worn by the caretakers of the orphanage where Chanel grew up, whilst the burgundy lining referenced the convent uniforms. The quilted outside was influenced by the jackets worn by jockeys, whilst at the same time enhancing the bag's shape and volume.

In an outdoor environment of turf and sea, Chanel took in the sun, making suntans not only acceptable, but a symbol denoting a life of privilege and leisure. Historically, identifiable exposure to the sun had been the mark of laborers doomed to a life of unremitting, unsheltered toil. "A milky skin seemed a sure sign of aristocracy." By the mid-1920s, women could be seen lounging on the beach without a hat to shield them from the sun's rays. The Chanel influence made sun bathing fashionable.