Antiques: Look fashioned by a 20th Century icon

Brought up in an orphanage after her mother died and father dumped her, she worked as a low-paid seamstress and cabaret singer until 1912, when she opened a shop of her own, followed by a couture house in Deauville. She did not achieve such astonishing success, riches and lasting fame without gaining the affections of a string of Europe's wealthiest and most powerful men. Her lovers included dashing textile heir Étienne Balsan, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, the Duke of Westminster, painter Salvador Dali, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, poet Pierre Reverdy, illustrator and designer Paul Tribe, and, during the Second World War, a high-ranking Nazi agent in Paris.

But her reputation as designer, innovator, businesswoman and socialite flourished and she is revered as the genius who invented modern female fashion in the Roaring Twenties, liberating women from the restrictions of corsets, designing her first "chemise" dress in 1920 and the collarless cardigan jacket in 1925.

The combination of simple elegance and comfort gave her outfits immediate, widespread and lasting appeal and she introduced the vogue for costume jewellery, the evening scarf and the eternally popular little black dress. At the height of her career she managed four businesses, including the manufacture of Chanel No. 5, and her fabulous wealth and dazzling social life was the talk of society.

Her fame as a couturier outweighed her tarnished reputation as an alleged drug-taking anti-Semite and a “horizontal collaborator” with the enemy and 1,500 people crammed into Christie's, London, for perhaps the most celebrated fashion sale of the 20th century, The Personal Collection of Chanel, in December 1978, an event which solidified her place in cultural history seven years after her death at 87. She had left her closest associate, Madame Lilian Grumbach, part of her wardrobe and she approached Christie's in Paris to enquire about selling the 40 suits and dresses and 44 items of costume jewellery that made up the collection.

Winning bidders included the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian and the National Museum of Norway in Oslo. A little black dress (known as the LBD) was sold to the Baroness de Rothschild for £1,500 (in 1978, remember) and the V & A bought a black sleeveless dress with three-quarter length belted coat and hat.

More recently, the absurdly exclusive Chanel Diamond Forever bag, made of pure white crocodile skin and adorned with 334 diamonds, was sold for $261,000 at auction, a staggering sum even for Chanel. All leading auction houses now sell Chanel fashions and at Sotheby's, Paris, last month, a limited edition circular black and gold “owl” evening bag went for £10,700 and at Woolley & Wallis, of Salisbury, Wiltshire, a lady's 18ct gold bracelet watch fetched £4,030.

Bonhams have had some stunning results with Chanel in recent times. A rare 1930s gem-set and enamel "Maltese Cross" cuff bracelet attributed to the Duke of Verdura for Chanel, originally owned by the actress Helen Hayes MacArthur (1900-1993), sold for $432,300, double its estimate, in New York in December 2023. Chanel herself wore a matching pair of Verdura cuffs just like the one sold.

Also at Bonhams in New York, a diamond "Comète" Chanel necklace from 1995 realised $225,000 in 2018. At Bonhams, London, Cecil Beaton's pen and ink on paper Portrait of Coco Chanel, fetched £50,060 in 2019, a large rose quartz crucifix pendant, by French jeweller Robert Goossens for Chanel sold for £10,880 in 2023 and a rose gold and silver Maison Lesage beaded evening ensemble for £10,830 in 2022.

A final word on the resilient genius born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel. When the Resistance, aware of her affair with a Nazi, cornered her and warned she could face disfigurement or even death, she saw them off with stylish aplomb, refusing to be intimidated, and they released her untouched. She died in her room at the Ritz in Paris on January 10, 1971. Her last words, to her maid, were: “You see, this is how you die.”