Coco Chanel’s Apartment at 31 Rue Cambon

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

I’m working on an article about Coco Chanel for Kiki magazine’s summer issue and have to share photos of her chic apartment with you.

Coco Chanel lived at the Ritz in Paris but worked and entertained within walking distance at Rue Cambon. There are four floors: the Chanel store is at street level, haute couture dressing rooms are on the second floor, her apartment is on the third, and her workshop is on the fourth. The rooftop of the building is said to have some of the best views of Paris.

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The photos above show Chanel’s sitting room and a chandelier that featured interlocking 5’s and C’s.

Below is a photo of the famous faceted mirrored spiral staircase that Chanel designed. It connected all four levels of her apartment and made it possible for her to stand in one spot and see what was happening on every floor.

In the photo below you can see the Chinese screens that she split and used as wallpaper. They feature her favorite flower, the Camellia, which she often used in her designs.

Chanel lived here until her death in 1971, and everything has been frozen in time. Here’s the opulent dining room:

Here are the haute couture dressing rooms on the floor below her apartment:

Other fun facts about Mme. Chanel:

• She was a Leo and collected lions.
• Whenever she went to her apartment on Rue Cambon, there were orders to spray Chanel No. 5 around the stairway so her signature scent would greet her.
• She decorated the sitting room with a suede beige sofa in a time when both suede and beige upholstery were unheard of. She was selective about who could actually sit on it.
• During a brief career as a singer, she changed her name from Gabrielle to Coco (”little pet”) and it stuck.
• She was very practical, which is why she liberated women from the corsets and long skirts that made it so difficult for them to breathe, work, and drive, saying women should have “the possibility to laugh and eat, without necessarily having to faint.”
• When she was young, Chanel couldn’t afford the high fashions of the day, so she created her own style by using inexpensive jersey–a fabric that was primarily used for men’s undergarments at the time.

• She hated the ornate ostrich-feathered hats of the day, famously asking, “How can a brain function under those things?” The flapper hat was her answer, and women loved it.
• Chanel was a trendsetter even when she didn’t intend to be. For example, after she singed her hair, she cut it all off, sparking the craze for bobbed hair.
• After a fortune-teller told her that 5 was her lucky number, she named her perfume Chanel No. 5, and it made her millions.
• She was the first designer to put her own name on a fragrance.
• The original No. 5 bottle was supposedly designed to mimic the shape of Place Vendome. Check out NotCot’s clever photoshopping that matches the dimensions of the bottle to the plaza.
• When she died at 87, they found only three complete outfits in the closet of her Paris apartment.

The birdcage in her sitting room (shown below) was the inspiration behind the 1992 Chanel commercial with Vanessa Paradis (see the video here).

I found these photos on NotCot, Blographic, and CoolHunting, so go there for more pictures and information. Photo of Coco Chanel photographed by Man Ray in 1935 (Man Ray Trust). Read more about Chanel and see iconic photos of her fashion at NPR.

The exterior of Chanel’s Rue Cambon apartment is shown above. You can watch Vogue’s video tour of its interiors on YouTube here.

If you really want the Chanel experience, you can stay at her apartment at the Ritz. According to Forbes Traveler:

“Staying at the Ritz is an experience,” offers hotel press attaché Matthieu Goffard. The hotel was the ideal home for Mademoiselle Coco Chanel for over 35 years. Guest can now stay at the Coco Chanel suite.

Art historian Patrick Hourcade (who worked at Vogue for 13 years) took painstaking effort to recreate the two bedroom suite in true Chanel style. The result is pure Coco panache—rare pieces from Christies and Sotheby’s—grand sofas with the signature Chanel quilting, and state-of-the art amenities including walk-in-closets and a Jacuzzi.”

(Suite photo via Forbes Traveler.)

Well, this was a lot of fun, but now I’ve got to get back to work on my article. If you have a daughter in her tweens who loves art, crafts, and fashion, then check out Kiki’s Spring issue–you’ll find my pieces on Japanese fashion designers Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake inside. My articles on Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld will appear in the summer issue.

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