Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel died on this day at the age 87 at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. It is interesting that she spent more than thirty years in this hotel on the Vendome square. She was engaged in fashion to the very end of her life, so that she was overseeing the preparations for the spring collection just before her death.
Interestingly, the perfume Chanel No. 5 was named not because it was the fifth in a series of her perfumes (it was the first), but because she had affinity towards number five since childhood and believed that this number would bring her good luck. In addition, when her master perfumer Ernest Beaux offered her perfume samples in small numbered vials, she chose precisely the fifth vial for a perfume that will be produced under her name. That became the famous Chanel No. 5.
