Chanel: Her Life

As Justine Picardie shows in this elegant book, the figure who introduced simplicity into women’s wardrobes was far from simple ... the Chanel uncovered by Picardie is a storyteller. She spun her own myth, but each of her creations was a story as well and each contains a story. –Frances Wilson, The Telegraph

This is the long-awaited reprint of Justine Picardie’s acclaimed 2010 illustrated biography of Coco Chanel (1883–1971), one of the 20th century’s most captivating personalities and a defining figure in fashion history. Whoever attempts to understand Chanel’s life is confronted by countless myths, half-truths and rumors. In this book Picardie discovers the woman behind the legend, and tells Chanel’s story with a flair and clarity of which Coco herself would approve. Chanel: Her Life explores every facet of Chanel’s universe: her fascinating private life as well as the famous icons of her fashion empire: the tweed jacket, the little black dress, N° 5 perfume, the pearls, the camellia.

The result is a comprehensive biography that reveals Chanel’s style to be the outcome of rigorous elegance, resolute self-belief and a determinedly unconventional stance. Picardie was granted access to Chanel’s archives and is the first author to have examined previously undiscovered private archives in the United Kingdom and France; and this unique knowledge underpins Chanel: Her Life. The book, designed and with drawings by Karl Lagerfeld, and with a new foreword by Picardie celebrating Lagerfeld’s extraordinary time at the House of Chanel, is the definitive biography of the tantalizingly elusive Coco Chanel.

Editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK and Town & Country UK, Justine Picardie (born 1961) is an acclaimed British novelist, fashion writer and biographer. Her books include If the Spirit Moves You (2001), Wish I May (2004), Daphne (2008) and Inge Morath: On Style (2016). Her 2010 biography of Coco Chanel was shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards.