On January 10, 1971, Gabrielle Chanel, then 87 years old, bowed out of her hotel room at the Ritz. A tribute to one of the greatest French icons of all time, La Grande Mademoiselle Coco Chanel.
Fifty years earlier, late in the night of Sunday, January 10 to Monday, the AFP bulletin came out: “Miss Coco Chanel died Sunday night in Paris. She was 87 years old“. The icon of the French chic style died at 9 pm.
Her last collection, prepared in her sewing workshop on rue Cambon shortly before her death, was presented on January 26th. According to sources close to the palace, “her end was very sweet. We are dismayed because nothing in the previous days suggested such an outcome,” they say.
Coco Chanel spends her last moments in this palace that she loves so much. In 1937, she said of the Ritz: “The Ritz is my home“. She spent an important part of her life in this 188 m2 suite on the second floor of the Ritz. The windows of her suite overlook the Place Vendôme. Nevertheless, she left her Parisian sanctuary for about ten years after the war to settle in Switzerland and to get away from her ties with the German occupiers.
© Douglas Kirkland
“Black is timeless,” she used to say. This little-used refuge was dressed in the same black. The designer, a perfectionist down to the smallest detail, revisited the decoration of her suite at the Ritz, bringing her suede sofa and Chinese screens from her workshop on rue Cambon.
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Featured Photo : Coco Chanel
