The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman

Born in 1883 in a poorhouse in southern France to unmarried parents, Chanel was raised in a convent after her mother died when she was six and her father abandoned her. The nuns taught her to sew, and while working as a café singer in the early 1900s she began designing hats for fun. Her lovers included a wealthy English industrialist, who helped her set up her own millinery shop and steered his society friends her way.

Chanel grew up to be the woman who not only gave us the little black dress and boxy jackets, but also popularized pants for women and easy, practical clothes that allowed women a chic freedom theyd never known before. In her strong-headed, elegant, opinionated, passionate, entirely French way, Coco Chanel helped bring women into the modern era. She was the only fashion icon to be named one of Time magazines 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel is a captivating, offbeat look at style, celebrity, and self-invention—all held together with Karbos droll Chanel-style commentary and culled from an examination of Chanels difficult childhood and triumphant adulthood, passionate love affairs, career choices, habits, eccentricities, and personal philosophies. Weaving Chanels life story into chapter themes that subtly convey life lessons, and with Chesley McLarens charming illustrations, it will leave the reader utterly entranced with, and inspired by, Chanels amazing individuality, confidence, and determination.

Delving into the extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of self-help book, exploring Chanels philosophy on a range of universal themes—from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.