Presents designer Coco Chanel's early life in an orphanage, where her sewing genius leads her to become a cabaret performer, hat maker, and international fashion icon.

Years after being abandoned at an orphanage by her father, Gabrielle Chanel finds a job in a tailor shop where she meets, and soon begins an affair with, French millionaire Etienne Balsan. Through Baron Balsan she is introduced into French society and given the opportunity to design her own style of hats. Though her career takes off, her personal life becomes more complicated when she falls in love with Balsan's former best friend Arthur Capel.

Discusses how the famous French fashion designer became a German intelligence operative during World War II, including how and why she was enlisted in spy missions, and how she rebuilt her empire after her post-war exile.

Though her name is synonymous with elegance and chic, the iconic Coco Chanel had a complicated dark side, and in late August 1944, as World War II drew to a close, she was arrested and interrogated on charges of treason to France. Many of the facts are lost to history, partly through Chanel's own obfuscation, but this much is known: the charges grew out of her war-time romance with a German spy, and one morning two soldiers from the French Forces...

"In this captivating narrative, Chanel's Riviera explores the fascinating world of the Cote d'Azur during a period that saw the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the twentieth century. The Cote d'Azur in 1938 was a world of wealth, luxury, and extravagance, inhabited by a sparkling cast of characters including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Joseph P. Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, Colette, the Mitfords, Picasso, Cecil Beaton, and Somerset Maugham....

This book on Coco Chanel chronicles the life and legacy of one of history's most influential couturiers. From her early forays into millinery, through her revolutionary inventions in sportswear and jersey fashions for women, through the classics that have made her name, such as the Chanel cardigan jacket and the little black dress and more.