Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Coco. She lived in the countryside with her parents, two brothers and two sisters. Her father used to travel a lot for work. Every time he went away for a long trip, he would bring back something different for each of his children. Coco used to beg him to bring only dresses for her. She loved to play dress up. In her free time, she would make dresses for her doll with leftover rags from her mother’s work.

As Coco grew up, she believed she could be much more than another poor girl in a small town, so she decided to go to the town and become a singer at a club. Those girls were always so glamorously dressed. When Coco dressed up to go on stage, she would feel like a princess, and she loved it. The life of a singer was tough, though. She couldn’t earn enough money just by singing, so she decided to work at the club stable and look after the horses. For a while, the horses were her best friends. Try as she might, she was not too good at singing, and that made her sad; but she would ride around to cheer herself.

One day, Prince Boy came to the town. As he was looking around, he saw this girl riding a horse and he was very impressed. He decided to look for her the next day. At night as he sat down to dine at the club, he was surprised to see the same girl singing; and she couldn’t sing! He approached her nonetheless, and told her that she was a terrible singer, but an awesome rider and invited her to stay with him at his palace where he had many good horses. Coco thought about it all night and decided she was indeed bad at singing and needed a change in career. If she moved to the palace, she would be able to wear pretty dresses to parties in any case, so off she went to Paris with the prince.

Paris was fabulous! Coco loved the parties and the dressing up and the horse riding. But after a while she started getting bored of all this. One day at a party, she got really tired of dancing because her hat kept falling off. It was heavy and difficult to pin up and hurt her neck and bugged her. But all the hat-makers had the same heavy hats, so she decided to make her own hats and sell them. She found a shop selling cheap straw hats, bought some colourful feathers and ribbons and got the prince to give her a room in the palace to set up shop.

Coco pranced around town in her hats; they were very comfortable and actually quite cool, except no one else thought so. It was disappointing. Coco had thought everyone would love a comfortable hat. She thought and thought, and then she had an idea! She asked the Prince’s sister, Princess G to wear it to the next big party. Princess G loved the hat! It was light and colourful! She loved it so much that she asked Coco to design some dresses for her too. Coco jumped in excitement. It was like dressing up her doll. But Coco decided the dresses would be how she liked them, with pockets and comfortable and stylish for the day and luxurious and romantic for the evenings. Soon all the ladies in Paris wanted to wear Coco’s dresses. Black and white and with pearls. And they became the coolest dresses to wear.

Coco’s shop became bigger and bigger with time. She lived on the top floor of the shop. Prince B would visit her often and when she was alone, she loved to watch the streets where girls of all ages were going to parties wearing her dresses. From being a poor girl in a small town, she had achieved her dream of becoming someone.

Coco lived to be 87 years old, but her style lives on till today. In fact, what you are wearing right now, was designed by Coco!*

  «The most courageous act still, is to think for yourself. Aloud.»

For Sara, my dear daughter who loves dressing up, and wants to be ‘Sara’ when she grows up.

Inspired by the life of Gabriel Bonheur Chanel, the woman who liberated women from being show pieces and fuelled them to be women of substance; and is responsible for 90 per cent of modern women’s clothing.

*Gabriel ‘Coco’ Chanel has given us the pleated skirt, trench coat, cardigan, gypsy skirt, suits, trousers, sling-back pumps and the sun-tan!