Coco Chanel
Alex Brogan
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was born in 1883 to poor parents in rural France. Her mother died when she was twelve; her father abandoned her to an orphanage. But Chanel possessed two qualities that would define her trajectory: grit and an eye for what women actually wanted to wear. At the orphanage, she learned to sew — a skill that became her escape route from poverty. "Poverty was the soil that nurtured my determination," she later reflected.