Chanel

A private house that still sells a 1955 handbag and a 1921 perfume, and has had four official designers.

Big name·Global·Founded 1910·Open to everyone

The Chanel logo, a trademark of Chanel. Shown to identify the house.

At a glance

Founded: 1910, as Chanel Modes, a hat shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris.¹
Founded by: Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. Pierre Wertheimer took 70 per cent of the perfume company set up in 1924.²⁶
Home: Paris, at 31 rue Cambon since 1918.¹ The holding company, Chanel Limited, is based in London.⁶
Owned by: Privately held by the brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer.⁶
What it sells: Couture and ready-to-wear with accessories, plus perfume and beauty, and watches and jewellery.⁸
Size: Revenue of $19.3 billion in 2025, up 3 per cent at reported exchange rates.¹⁰

Watch

Coco – Inside CHANEL · CHANEL

Who runs itAs of 2026-09-19. Press a person to read more

How it got herePress a year

1910

1 of 12

Gabrielle Chanel opens Chanel Modes, a hat shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris.¹ Wikipedia puts that first shop at number 31, but the house's own timeline says 21 and dates the move to 31 to 1918.¹⁶

The identity

The monogram is two capital Cs, back to back and interlocked, one facing left and one facing right.⁶ In the United States, Chanel filed for the word mark and the double C on 18 November 1924, and both were registered on 24 February 1925, at first only for perfume and cosmetics.⁶ Its origin is murky. Wikipedia says the device was given to her by the Château de Crémat near Nice, while most people read it simply as Coco Chanel's initials.⁶

Karl Lagerfeld leaned on it hard. His 11.12 handbag of 1983 carried the double C, and CNN later wrote that over his 36 years his own image became arguably more familiar than the logo.⁶⁹

Tweed suit
A trimmed tweed suit, first shown in 1956.³ Blazy kept it for his first show but made the bouclé lighter and the shape softer.⁹
The 2.55
Quilted leather on a gold chain, named after February 1955, when it was first shown to the public.³⁶
No. 5
The first Chanel perfume, launched in 1921 and named with a sample number.²⁶
Two-tone pumps
Beige leather to lengthen the leg and a black toe to make the foot look smaller, created in 1957.³
The camellia
Her favourite flower, whose scent cannot be extracted, now names a jewellery line and still turns up on the tweed.²⁶⁹

Campaigns and facesPress one to read it

How it positions itself

Chanel is one of the few big houses nobody can buy shares in. The Wertheimer family owns it outright, so it does not post the quarterly figures that LVMH and Kering must, and it can plan in private.⁶⁹ Nair calls the result patience. “We try not to be too distracted by the hype or frenzy,” she told WWD in May 2026.¹⁰

It grows slowly on purpose. Bruno Pavlovsky, its president of fashion, told WWD the target is 5 to 7 per cent a year, split evenly between higher prices and more pieces sold, and prices rose by an average of 3 per cent in April 2026.¹⁰ The Classic Flap bag cost $220 at launch and now costs over $10,000.⁶ Beauty is the cheapest way in, and it is where Chanel is carefully widening online selling.⁶¹⁰

Chanel talks through the making. With its 2025 results it said it had put $700 million into its manufacturing network, taking the suppliers it controls close to 75, and it hired 30 more people to split the design studio into three teams.¹⁰ When it chose Blazy, Pavlovsky said the house put “the brand before the personality” and gave him two years to find his feet.⁸

Three things to take from it

01
Name the product after a fact
No. 5 took the number of the sample Chanel picked, and the 2.55 took its launch month, February 1955.³⁶ A century on, neither name needs explaining. When you name a hero product, use something true about how it was made, such as a batch number or a date, and keep it for good.
02
Your sales staff are half the brand
Leena Nair told WWD in 2026 that half the reason a client finds Chanel and stays is the relationship with an adviser in the boutique.¹⁰ For a small brand that adviser is you, on WhatsApp or at a pop-up. Write down how you greet a customer and how you follow up, then train your first hire on it before you pay for any advertising.
03
Tell the hard chapter yourself
Chanel's own timeline says only that the couture house closed in 1939.⁴ AFP, which had once printed her official version, set out in 2021 how she became Abwehr agent F-7124, drawing on Hal Vaughan's 2011 book and archive files.¹¹ When that book came out, the house would admit only that she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the war.¹² Silence did not bury it. If your founding story has a hard chapter, tell it plainly and with dates before someone else does.

Sources

Every fact above links to one of these. Checked against them on 2026-09-19.

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Chanel

At a glance

Watch

Who runs itAs of 2026-09-19. Press a person to read more

How it got herePress a year

The identity

Tweed suit

The 2.55

No. 5

Two-tone pumps

The camellia

Campaigns and facesPress one to read it

How it positions itself

Three things to take from it

Name the product after a fact

Your sales staff are half the brand

Tell the hard chapter yourself

Read next in the Library

Sources

Louis Vuitton