Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was born on August 19, 1883 in Saumur France. Her mother worked in the poorhouse where Gabrielle was born, and died when Chanel was only twelve. Then her father abandoned her to the region’s largest orphanage. Chanel was taken in by the sisters of a convent in Moulines when she was seventeen, and she learned how to make clothes two years before she left there.
Chanel worked as a cafe-concert singer and acquired in the process the nickname “Coco” in 1905~8 (Mackrell, 1992, p. 18). The nickname stuck for the rest of her life.