Biography | Coco Chanel — The 1913 Shop Between the Casino and the Hôtel Normandy

Paris already knew her as a milliner.

The clothes began here.

In the summer of 1913 Arthur Capel, the English coal-freight man she called Boy, leased a shop on rue Gontaut-Biron in Deauville, between the casino and the Hôtel Normandy.

The street is now avenue Lucien Barrière. The number is 11.

The awning read Gabrielle Chanel, her full name, not the nickname from the music-hall years in Moulins.

Hats came first.

Then jersey and tricot, fabrics that in 1913 still meant men's underwear, cut into sweaters, jackets, and the striped marinière she lifted from the harbour.

Her sister Antoinette and her young aunt Adrienne walked the boardwalk in the new pieces so the racecourse crowd could see them move.

When war came the next year she thought of shutting the door.

Capel told her to keep it open for the Paris women who were leaving the capital.

The Deauville rooms are the moment the milliner became a dressmaker.

The Paris shop at 21 rue Cambon was still legally limited to hats because another couturière already worked in that building.

Here there was no such neighbour.

A 1917 plate in Les Élégances parisiennes already shows the jersey sportswear that would be copied for the rest of the century.

The present tenant is a menswear shop. A later drawing of her face is on the wall at 11-13.

The pin is the first fashion address, not the later house on rue Cambon.

Photo: illustration in Les Élégances parisiennes, March 1917, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons