He is twenty-seven, but he looks like a kid (a handsome kid) who has put a suit on for the first time. She is seventy-nine, but she wears her wrinkles the way she wears her Chanel suit: with defiant elegance.” — From the foreword by Judith Thurman Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) is a fashion icon unlike any other. She invented modern clothing for women: At the height of the Belle Époque, she stripped women of their corsets and feathers, bobbed their hair, put them in bathing suits, and sent them out to get tanned in the sun. She introduced slacks, costume jewelry, and the exquisitely comfortable suit. She made the first couture perfume—Chanel No. 5—which remains the most popular scent ever created. Chanel knew and collaborated with the likes of Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Jean Renoir, and Visconti, even as she matched their modernist innovations by liberating women from the prison of nineteenth-century fashion and introducing a whole new concept of elegance. Published to coincide with the 125th anniversary of Coco Chanel’s birth, the staggering collection of intimate and unique photographs here by one of the world’s acclaimed photographer/artists sheds new light on one of the great stories of the modern age—a woman named by Time magazine as one of the one hundred most influential people of the century.With an authoritative foreword by literary giant and seasoned biographer Judith Thurman—whose insight in print has resulted in numerous literary awards and brought light to many diverse subjects—this book is a unique addition to the literature, both verbal and visual, of one of the most longstanding and popular fashion geniuses of all time.

9780980155716 PB $74.95 – Available now