The beginnings of Chanel's fashion brand lie in the French seaside resorts. In 1912, Coco—then still Gabrielle—Chanel opened her first boutique in Deauville; shops in Biarritz, Monte Carlo and Cannes soon followed. There, her simple, sporty designs met with a cosmopolitan clientele who carried her fashion back to the capital, Paris. In the 1920s, the Chanel brand thus experienced its first heyday, driven by the artistic and social upheaval of those years, the Roaring Twenties. This lavishly illustrated catalogue documents in drawings and photographs the extraordinary productivity of the designer who maintained friendships with artists such as Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and others. In the 1920s, Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes were performing on the Riviera. The book reveals the Slavic influence in Chanel's creations, highlighting a network of correspondences with female artists close to Diaghilev's circle, such as Natalia Goncharova and Sonia Delaunay. The book also features La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel's dream villa built in 1929 near Monaco.

GABRIELLE CHANEL erased all traces of her childhood. The only known fact is that she was born in Saumur (France) on August 19, 1883. In 1910, she opened a hat store in Paris, which was followed by boutiques in Deauville, Biarritz, Cannes and Monte-Carlo. Her line of jersey sportswear for women revolutionized fashion and liberated the female body.