It has survived the fast paced fashion of today, accelerated by "a hungry media regularly in need of unveiling the Next Big Thing. The dazzling coverage has, in turn, convinced many that their stardom will come via the runways of Paris, Milan, London and New York."(The Myth of Coco Chanel, Frank DiGiacomo, Elle, May 1997 issue.)

The myth of Coco Chanel might have been started by Chanel herself. Her early years tend to be vague, full of inaccuracies and lacking in detail.

It is generally accepted that Chanel was born in Saumur, the Auvergne, France on August 19, 1883 baptized as Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel. She was educated at a convent orphanage in Aubazine from 1895-1900. That she was a clerk at the Au Sans Pareil hosiery shop, Moulins and was a cafe-concert singer from 1905-08 in Moulins and Vichy where she started using the nickname "Coco"

She lived with her true love Ettiene Balsan at the Chateau de Royalieu and Paris from 1908-09. Balsan died early and since then Chanel, although she had liaisons with several men, never admitted being in love with anyone else.

Since her death in 1971, the House of Chanel had kept Coco's legacy. "The myth-bearers and mythmakers who inhabit Chanel's offices on the rue Cambon and Avenue Charles de Gaulle in Paris and 57th Street in New York have succeeded in making Chanel even more commercially successful at the end of the century than at the beginning, because they have learned to strike a balance between protecting the timeless elements of Chanel's heritage (such as No5) and adapting other elements to the future." (The Myth of Coco Chanel, Frank DiGiacomo, Elle, May 1997 issue.)

In 1983, Karl Lagerfeld became the Director of Collections and Ready-to-Wear at the House of Chanel. "Lagerfield resuscitated the couture line that bore Chanel's name, before establishing a successful ready-to-wear line for the house. Lagerfield is the one person in the current Chanel empire who can deconstruct Chanel without nostalgia." (The Myth of Coco Chanel, Frank DiGiacomo, Elle, May 1997 issue.)