Chanel

Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel opened her first millinery boutique in Paris in 1910, beginning a quiet revolution that would free women from the corset and redefine elegance for the twentieth century.

Borrowing from menswear and the ease of jersey, Chanel created a new language of comfort and confidence, culminating in 1926 with the little black dress, hailed by Vogue as a uniform for the modern woman.

Her codes became immortal: the collarless tweed suit, the chain-strapped 2.55 quilted bag, the camellia, the rope of pearls, and No. 5, the most famous perfume in the world.

After the war Chanel staged a triumphant return, and her aesthetic of refined simplicity was carried forward for decades by Karl Lagerfeld, who reinvented the house season after season without ever betraying its soul.

Today Chanel remains the supreme expression of Parisian luxury, where the founder's belief, that true elegance is the art of elimination, continues to shape modern style.