Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From The World's Most Elegant Woman

What Ms. Karbo has done is quite simply taken the much written about life of one of the world’s most famous and successful designers and has given a new “spin” to it. The retelling of Coco’s life is not that interesting after you have read the first 10 books written about her, but Ms. Karbo has turned this life into a wry, amusing and occasionally laugh out loud retelling of Mademoiselle’s life, times, and opinions.

The gist of it is simple: The Gospel takes Chanel out of her time frame and is discussed as if she started out in the latter part of the past century and into this one. How else could one explain Misia Sert being referred to as Coco’s BFF or how Misia had a “girl crush” on Coco? How else can we explain that the stories Chanel told of her growing up and past—all contrived versions with little truth—as “Chanelore?” It is actually so today in its retelling that one must remember this happened almost one-half century ago or more.

Ms. Karbo also weaves in her own fascination with the brand and the designer as she comically describes the trials and tribulations of trying to find “the” perfect Chanel jacket as opposed to the Lagerfeld Chanel jacket. Her personal relationship to the brand is skillfully entwined in the telling of the Chanel life, even if we don’t know which part of Chanel’s life is true and which part is “Chanelore.”

What cannot be overlooked is that Ms. Karbo sticks to the life history of Chanel without deviation and injects new life to what should have been a hackneyed and tired subject.

This is a great read for those who are well acquainted with the life of Chanel as well as for those who have never read a biography of the “Grande Dame de la Mode.”