The Dawn of Coco

When Gabrielle Chanel turned 18, she left the orphanage at Aubazine in which the nuns introduced sewing to her. She was not permitted to stay because the nuns only kept girls that had a pious desire to be a part of their training. Although Chanel had no parents present, she had aunts and grandparents. Chanel went to visit her aunt Louise and got sent to the Notre Dame School in Moulins, which was a religious establishment managed by canonesses (women that lived according to the rule of nuns) where her aunt Adrienne was attending. When Chanel was in Aubazine, she played the organ and sang, dazzling the nuns. Contrastingly, no one was amazed by Chanel at the Notre Dame school because she was a charity child living in a free place, and consequently everyone treated her differently because she was not as fortunate as other girls there. She was given more education at Notre Dame thinking that there would always be accessible work as a seamstress. Chanel learned how to shape and embroider hats from her aunt. When Chanel was living with her aunt, she dreamed about escaping to Paris.

How did the name Coco come about if her name was Gabrielle? In Moulins, Chanel would go to a pavilion in a small park where concerts took place. Due to her talents in singing, she was committed to going on stage and singing in public. One of the songs she knew was called, 'Qui qu'a vu Coco?', which was a short song about a girl who lost her dog. The audience gave her the nickname of the lost dog. Therefore, Gabrielle became Coco, a transformation that seemed insignificant at the time but led to birth of an icon.