Some Information! Designer Coco Chanel gave the world the little black dress, Chanel No. 5 perfume, and a casually classic notion of style that influenced women's clothes throughout the 20th century. Coco -- a nickname meaning "little pet" -- was raised in an orphanage, where she learned to sew. In 1910 she began selling hats from her own shop, and by the 1920s her fashion business had expanded to include a couture house, her own textile factory and a line of perfumes that included the famous No. 5. Chanel took women's fashions away from corseted styles and introduced casual, practical clothing that borrowed fabrics and attitudes from men's fashion. She was the first to introduce black as a fashion color; her versatile, semi-formal "little black dress" became a Chanel trademark and an enduring fashion standard. During and after World War II Chanel's popularity waned, and her love affair with a Nazi officer kept her in a form of self-imposed exile in Switzerland for more than a decade. She made a comeback in 1954 and her designs became some of the most popular in the western world, especially in the United States. Since her death the Coco Chanel Company has been under the direction of designer Karl Lagerfeld. Popularly known as "Coco" or "Mademoiselle" by her inner circle, she was born in the small city of Saumur, France in 1883, although she asserted she was born in 1893, in Auvergne. Her mother died when Chanel was six, and shortly afterward her father abandoned her and her four siblings; the Chanel children were then placed in the care of relatives and spent some time in an orphanage. After affairs with generous wealthy men – a military officer and later an English industrialist – she was able to open a shop in Paris in 1910 selling ladies' hats, and within a year moved the business to the fashionable Rue Cambon. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Chanel was set up in business by a lover, Étienne Balsan, a French textile heir, and her love affairs with the artist Paul Iribe, the Duke of Westminster, Grand Duke Dmitri of Russia, and British sportsman Boy Capel all had a considerable influence on the stylistic evolution of her often male-inspired fashions. She never married. She almost married the Duke of Westminster but declined, noting "There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel." One of her most widely quoted aphorisms is: "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road." The House of Chanel in Paris, under Karl Lagerfeld, remains one of the top design houses today.