Paperback

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She revolutionised the way women looked. She persuaded them to throw away their corsets, shorten their skirts, bob their hair, and scent their wold with Chanel No.5. Shrewd and secretive, intelligent and independent, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was to become an icon. But how closely did her carefully moulded image match the truth?

Born in a poorhouse, raised in an orphanage - not by the two aunts that she herself invented - she fought from a young age to escape obscurity. Developing a love of luxury and a sense of fashion as a wealthy man's mistress, she rose from back-street milliner to become the head of a vast business empire, where she socialised with Picasso, Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau. Charles-Roux also reveals one of Chanel's best kept secrets - her love affair with a wartime spy.

Chanel's legend did not fade with her death, and nor has the mark of sheer elegance that she left upon the world of fashion. This is an unmatchable portrait of the living woman behind the vibrant legend.

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