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Coco Chanel quotes

5 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as Coco Chanel wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around.

Illustrated portrait of Coco Chanel

How these quotes were checked

How we decide whether a quote is genuine

Nearly everything quotable about Gabrielle Chanel traces to one book: The Allure of Chanel, the monologues she delivered to the writer Paul Morand in St. Moritz in 1946, published in her voice. Every quote above is checked against the full text of Euan Cameron's translation, read page by page through a borrowed library scan.

Two of the most famous lines credited to her are checked below, and neither is in the book.

Four famous Hemingway quotes, fact-checked

A sentence linked to Hemingway may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.

Unproven

“Luxury is not the opposite of poverty but the opposite of vulgarity.”

Always cited to Morand's book — and it is not there. The word “vulgarity” does not appear anywhere in the translation's text, and no page pairs luxury with poverty. Earlier searches across printed volumes in HathiTrust also found no contiguous printed form of the sentence. Until someone produces a page, it cannot be called hers.

  • — Paul Morand; trans. Euan Cameron, The Allure of Chanel — Paul Morand's 1946 conversations with Gabrielle Chanel, translated by Euan Cameron (2013)
Unproven

“My life didn't please me, so I created my life.”

Also routinely credited to the Morand conversations, and also absent from the translation's full text. The verified self-definition she did give Morand — “I am not a heroine. But I have chosen the person I wanted to be and am.” — says the same thing in words a page actually carries.

  • — Paul Morand; trans. Euan Cameron, The Allure of Chanel — Paul Morand's 1946 conversations with Gabrielle Chanel, translated by Euan Cameron (2013)
I am not a heroine. But I have chosen the person I wanted to be and am.
— Gabrielle Chanel, in Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (1946), translated by Euan Cameron
I have created fashion for a quarter-of-a-century. Why? Because I knew how to express my times. I invented the sports dress for myself; not because other women played sports, but because I did. I didn't go out because I needed to design dresses, I designed dresses precisely because I went out, because I have lived the life of the century, and was the first.
— Gabrielle Chanel, in Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (1946), translated by Euan Cameron
For a quarter-of-a-century, I have created fashion. I will not begin again.
— Gabrielle Chanel, in Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (1946), translated by Euan Cameron
Yes, society people amuse me more than the others. They make me laugh. They have wit, tact, a charming disloyalty, a well-bred nonchalance, and an arrogance that is very specific, very caustic, always on the alert; they know how to arrive at the right time, and to leave when necessary.
— Gabrielle Chanel, in Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (1946), translated by Euan Cameron
“Paris will no longer create fashion,” I hear people say. New York will invent it, Hollywood will propagate it and Paris will be subjected to it. I don't believe that.
— Gabrielle Chanel, in Paul Morand's The Allure of Chanel (1946), translated by Euan Cameron

Questions about Coco Chanel quotes

What is Coco Chanel's most famous verified quote?

From The Allure of Chanel: “I am not a heroine. But I have chosen the person I wanted to be and am.” It is her own summing-up, spoken to Paul Morand in 1946.

Did Chanel say “Luxury is not the opposite of poverty but the opposite of vulgarity”?

No page has ever been produced for it. It is always cited to Morand's The Allure of Chanel, but the sentence is not in the book — the word “vulgarity” never appears in the translation at all.

Where do Chanel quotes actually come from?

Mostly from The Allure of Chanel, the 1946 monologues she gave the writer Paul Morand, published in her voice — plus a handful of documented interviews. The book is the closest thing to Chanel on the record, and the quotes above are checked against its full text.

Is The Allure of Chanel her autobiography?

Not exactly: Paul Morand wrote it from her spoken monologues, in her first person, and published it after her death. It is her voice through his pen — which is why each quote here names both of them.

References

References

The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.

  1. 1The Allure of Chanel — Paul Morand's 1946 conversations with Gabrielle Chanel, translated by Euan Cameron

    Memoir
    Pushkin Press; read via Internet Archive controlled digital lending, 2013
    Used for

    The full translated text every quote and both absence checks were verified against.

    View source
i
Why these sources are here

Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.

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