Biography | Coco Chanel — 31 Rue Cambon, the Stair That Faced the Salon

People treat Chanel as a perfume bottle and a camellia.

The working address was 31 rue Cambon, in the first arrondissement of Paris.

Gabrielle Chanel opened a millinery shop in this street in 1910, after the earlier rooms in Deauville and at 21 rue Cambon. By the 1920s the building held the salon on the first floor and her private apartment above. She sat on the stairs to watch fittings through a mirrored wall. The apartment was kept as a stage of lacquer screens, Coromandel panels and a suite of crystal.

This is not the later flagship as a tourist front. It is the block from which the 1926 jersey dress, the 1921 perfume numbered five, and the 1954 return after the war were run. She died in the Ritz, across rue Cambon, on 10 January 1971. The house still occupies the same numbers.

The pin is the public face of the maison, not a private villa on the Riviera. The street is still a working couture street. The stair is the part of the biography you can still stand on.