She opened a hat shop in 1909 first but that was just the beginning. With the help and encouragement of her romantic associates, her first expansion was into clothes in Deauville and Biarritz.

Later, she takes advantage of her access to the pride of royalty: perfumes. She names the perfume after herself and assigns the fragrances numbers, hence No. 5, which remains popular decades after its introduction.

She closed her Paris fashion house down in 1939 after her affair with a Nazi officer was revealed. She skipped out on France altogether and spent the war years in Switzerland. It would be almost 15 years before she would re-enter the public eye.

When she did re-emerge from the Switzerland years, her reputation was tarnished. But WWII was nine years in the past, James Brown, Elvis and Little Richard were young and there was change in the wind. The fashion public loved her new designs and released the old grudge.

Hollywood and Coco dabbled a bit with each other, but she and Los Angeles were not a good mix. In Paris, she lived at the Ritz-Carlton hotel where she cherished her private quarters.

She died in 1971. Karl Lagerfeld is the current head designer. He and his team have rode the wave of expansion into other fashion lines, such as sunglasses, leather good and footwear.

Not many teenagers today know that there really was a person named Chanel. That was Coco Chanel and she was an original. Or take Dior for that matter. People all over the world wear the Dior logo on everything from underwear to sunglasses, yet do they know there really was a person named Dior. That's Christian Dior.

Today, the fashion world and the circles of the well heeled have all experienced the luxury of Chanel's parties. It is a world imagined by its founder. She envisioned a lifestyle and created clothes to live that lifestyle. She could not have imagined her name and logo so well positioned in the 21st Century.

Our version of Chanel Sunglasses, much less expensive, some even say cheap! But once, you get them you'll feel like a million!