This new biography offers unprecedented insight into Coco Chanel's complex and enigmatic life and features previously unpublished information and images. Coco Chanel continues to beguile more than four decades after her death; her life and work are a source of enduring fascination. Chanel expert Isabelle Fiemeyer unveils the mysteries that have surrounded the private and public figure by piecing together new research with accounts from Chanel's intimate friends and relatives, artists, writers, photographers, directors, actors, scholars, and those who worked with her inside the House of Chanel. The author describes Chanel's carefully crafted persona and then gradually elucidates each layer of intrigue that surrounded the great fashion designer to reveal the woman behind the enigma. Her life was marked by suffering that stemmed from affronts, an absent father, abandonment, and death, but also by vitally positive forces--her idealized childhood, collaborations with the world's greatest artists, and her permanently hypnotic, albeit staged, presence.