Coco Chanel

Chanel designed the clothes that carried her name, from jersey dresses cut from a fabric then used for underwear to the little black dress of 1926 and the bouclé suit she launched on her comeback in 1954, at the age of seventy. The perfume was different: Chanel No. 5 was composed by Ernest Beaux, and the Wertheimer family's company made and sold it under a deal she later fought bitterly. Her wartime conduct, including a relationship with a German officer and documented links to German intelligence, is part of the record.