Megan Hess - Coco Chanel

To Paul McNally and Lucy Heaver for giving me the opportunity to illustrate Cocos life with passion and creativity.

To Meelee Soorkia for being the most wonderful editor and making sense of the hundreds and hundreds of Coco moments to create this book. Weve pieced together so many details in Cocos story, I do feel you could have another life as a Tetris Master!

To Jo Barry, thank you for all the incredible research you did for this book. I thought I knew all there was to know about Mademoiselle Chanel but time after time you found more intricate details of her life. To Laura Gardner, thank you for turning the disparate parts of Cocos life into a story. To Murray Batten for your incredibly elegant design that does Coco justice. To Mark Campbell for your amazing design brain that makes my wildest ideas possible.

To Martina Granolic, thank you for casting your well-tuned eye over every single page of this book and being my reference point to all that is chic and Coco-worthy to be included.

To Justine Clay for encouraging and supporting my work from the very beginning.

To my husband Craig, thank you for listening to me talk about Coco Chanel for twelve months straight and for sitting with me in 31 Rue Cambon for two hours while I Chaneled Coco!

To my two children, Gwyn and Will. Even though you had no idea who Coco was in the begining, you still loved hearing her story. Both my children now prefer to wear their scissors on their necklaces just as Coco did!

Megan Hess was destined to draw. An initial career in graphic design evolved into art direction for some of the worlds leading advertising agencies and for Liberty London. In 2008, Megan illustrated Candace Bushnells number-one-bestselling book Sex and the City. This catapulted Megan onto the world stage, and she began illustrating portraits for The New York Times, Vogue Italia, Vanity Fair and TIME, who described Megans work as love at first sight.

Today, Megan is one of the worlds most sought-after fashion illustrators, with a client list that includes Givenchy, Tiffany & Co., Wedgwood, Louis Vuitton and Harpers Bazaar. Megans iconic style has been used in global campaigns for Fendi, Prada, Cartier, Dior and Salvatore Ferragamo. She has illustrated live for fashion shows such as Fendi at Milan Fashion Week, Chopard at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Viktor&Rolf and Christian Dior Couture.

Megan has created a signature look for Bergdorf Goodman, New York, and a bespoke bag collection for Harrods of London. She has illustrated a series of portraits for Michelle Obama, as well as portraits for Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman. She is also the Global Artist in Residence for the prestigious Oetker Hotel Collection.

Megan illustrates all her work with a custom Montblanc pen that she affectionately calls Monty.

Megan has written and illustrated eight bestselling fashion books, as well as her much-loved series for children, Claris the Chicest Mouse in Paris.

When shes not in her studio working, youll find her planning her next trip to 31 Rue Cambon in Paris to capture a little more of the magic that Mademoiselle Chanel first created.

Visit Megan at meganhess.com

THE LIFE OF GABRIELLE COCO CHANEL is shrouded in mystery. Perhaps because she was uncomfortable with her humble beginnings, Chanel had a reputation for obscuring her past glossing over details, dismissing transgressions and painful memories. Just as she reinvented fashion, cutting and re-cutting a sleeve forty times over, she did the same to her past. Though there are few accounts of her youth, it is clear that Chanel had a difficult start to life: raised in poverty after losing her mother and being abandoned by her father. Without the support of parents at a young age, she endured a lonely childhood in an orphanage in Aubazine in rural France.

Perhaps it was the difficulties of her early life that inspired her to pursue a radically different path, first as a performer, then as a milliner, and eventually the iconic fashion designer she became. Chanel would rise above her circumstances to forever revolutionise fashion for women in the modern era. Her beauty and flair won her many friends and admirers; the most celebrated figures of the century Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, Dal, Stravinsky and Churchill sought her company. The creative vision of her designs would live on as trademarks of an iconic fashion brand.

Chanel was born in 1883 in Saumur, a market town on the river Loire.
The illegitimate daughter of a laundrywoman and a merchant, Chanel was twelve when her mother died and her father left her in a convent in the town of Aubazine.

It was here in the orphanage that Chanel learned the art of survival.

Though most young girls of the era were taught how to sew, Chanel had a natural flair for needlework and honed her skills during school vacations spent with her grandparents in the provincial capital of Moulins.

These holidays were a pleasure that offered respite from life at the orphanage.

Bored and miserable at the convent, Chanel absorbed the austere beauty of her surroundings. Her strict uniform, featuring a white blouse and black pleated skirt, would later influence her trademark silhouette.

The beige, black and white of the nuns habits, their rosary beads, crosses and chains would also emerge as emblems throughout her career.

Chanel left the convent in Aubazine for the Notre Dame school in Moulins, where her aunt Adrienne, only a year her senior, was being educated. Chanels sartorial abilities caught the attention of the Mother Superior, who found employment for her and Adrienne as shop assistants in a local drapers store on the Rue de lHorloge.

The girls shared an attic bedroom above the shop, working on weekends for a nearby tailor where they altered breeches for cavalry officers stationed in the town.

Chanel and Adrienne socialised with the local gentlemen, many of whom were in the army and would often take them out dancing.

When not plying her trade with a needle, Chanel dreamed of becoming a singer. Her stage debut came at La Rotonde, a popular entertaining pavilion in the park of Moulins, where she accepted a regular spot performing with a local cabaret.