Coco Chanel Trivia
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48 free Coco Chanel trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Coco Chanel trivia quiz follows Gabrielle Chasnel, as her birth certificate misspelled her, from a charity hospital in Saumur and the orphanage at Aubazine where she learned to sew, through the cabaret in Moulins where she may have picked up 'Coco', the water-dispensing job at Vichy, and the two men, Étienne Balsan and Boy Capel, who bankrolled the hats, the Deauville shop and the jersey suits. The second half covers No. 5 and the 1924 deal she spent twenty years trying to undo, Stravinsky in her spare house, the Duke of Westminster and the line about there being only one Chanel, La Pausa, the Hollywood million, the little black dress Vogue compared to a Ford, the 2.55 bag, the camellia, the Ritz during the occupation, Baron von Dincklage, Agent F 7124 and Operation Modellhut, the Churchill question, Switzerland, the 1954 comeback financed by her old enemy, and the last words she said to her maid. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Fashion and Salvador Dalí quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Coco Chanel was born in 1883 in a poorhouse hospital in which Loire Valley town?
Saumur
Saumur was a start she hid for life: Chanel claimed she had been raised by aunts and never admitted the poorhouse.
Q 02What was Coco Chanel's real first name?
Gabrielle
Gabrielle was her given name, and the birth register spelt her surname Chasnel, a spelling she never had changed.
Q 03After her mother died, Chanel was sent to the orphanage at which convent, where she learned to sew?
Aubazine
Aubazine stayed with her: decades later she had the abbey's stone staircase echoed in her own Riviera villa.
Q 04Which designer took over the House of Chanel in 1983 and led it until his death in 2019?
Karl Lagerfeld
Karl Lagerfeld arrived twelve years after her death and spent 36 years reworking her suits, pearls and interlocking Cs.
Q 05Where did Chanel make her stage debut as a poseuse, an entertainer between the star turns?
A cafe-concert in Moulins
A cafe-concert in Moulins drew the town's cavalry officers, and she sang there at night after days spent sewing.
Q 06In one account, Chanel's nickname came from which song she sang in cabaret?
Who Has Seen Coco?
Who Has Seen Coco? was in her cabaret repertoire, though others trace the name to 'cocotte', a kept woman.
Q 07Finding no stage work in Vichy in 1906, Chanel is said to have taken what job?
Dispensing glasses of mineral water
Dispensing glasses of mineral water at a spa spring was her fallback, by one biographer's account, before she gave up on a stage career.
Q 08Étienne Balsan, Chanel's first wealthy lover, was an ex-cavalry officer and heir to what?
A textile fortune
A textile fortune let Balsan quit the army to breed racehorses, and Chanel moved into his château.
Q 09Which polo player installed Chanel in a Paris apartment and financed her first shops?
Arthur 'Boy' Capel
Arthur 'Boy' Capel stayed her lover until he died in a car crash in December 1919, the year after marrying an English aristocrat.
Q 10The Chanel No. 5 flacon is widely thought to echo which of her lover's possessions?
His toiletry bottles
His toiletry bottles, from the shirtmaker Charvet, are the usual answer, though a rival story credits his whisky decanter.
Q 11Chanel's first Paris boutique, opened on rue Cambon in 1910, sold only what?
Hats
Hats were all her lease allowed: a dressmaker already worked in the building, so the terms barred her from making dresses.
Q 12Chanel's 1913 Deauville boutique used jersey and tricot, fabrics then mainly used for what?
Men's underwear
Men's underwear was jersey's usual fate; short of money, she chose the cloth because it was cheap, then made its ease the point.
Q 13Chanel's Biarritz shop, opened in 1915, was so lucrative that it let her do what?
Repay her backer in full
Repay her backer in full: the resort sat beside neutral Spain, and wealthy clients from across the border kept buying through the war.
Q 21Who opened British high society to Chanel in 1923 and later acted as courier in Operation Modellhut?
Vera Bate Lombardi
Vera Bate Lombardi, a well-connected English socialite, was freed from an Italian prison for the trip, then denounced Chanel in Madrid as a German spy.
Q 22What was the name of the Riviera villa Chanel built at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin?
La Pausa
La Pausa hosted Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí, and its principal rooms were later recreated inside the Dallas Museum of Art.
Q 23Which Hollywood producer brought Chanel to California in 1931 to dress his studio's stars?
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn wanted Paris chic for United Artists, but she costumed only a few films, Tonight or Never among them, before going home.
Q 14Which composer's family did Chanel house at her villa Bel Respiro in 1920-21?
Igor Stravinsky's
Igor Stravinsky's family, cut off from Russia by the revolution, stayed from September 1920 to May 1921, and she later claimed a brief affair with the composer.
Q 15By the usual account, why is Chanel No. 5 called No. 5?
She picked the fifth sample offered
She picked the fifth sample offered from perfumer Ernest Beaux's numbered vials, and five was already her lucky number.
Q 16Which store's founder introduced Chanel to her future perfume partners at the Longchamps races in 1922?
Galeries Lafayette
Galeries Lafayette founder Théophile Bader wanted No. 5 on his counters, and took 20 per cent of the new perfume company for the introduction.
Q 17Which star gave No. 5 pop-culture notoriety by saying she wore nothing else to bed?
Marilyn Monroe
The 1921 launch was one of the first times a designer had extended a brand beyond clothing.
Q 18By 1935 Chanel was a daily user of which drug, a habit she kept to the end of her life?
Morphine
Morphine, injected daily, is the habit her biographer Hal Vaughan describes, and her close friend Misia Sert shared it.
Q 19The writer Colette likened Chanel at work to which animal?
A small black bull
A small black bull was Colette's image in a 1932 sketch, prompted by the tuft of curly black hair falling over Chanel's brow.
Q 20Chanel's ten-year affair from 1923 was with which British aristocrat, known to intimates as 'Bendor'?
The Duke of Westminster
The Duke of Westminster showered her with jewels; years later her wartime code name as an agent was 'Westminster'.
Q 24Which French actress played the young designer in the film Coco Before Chanel?
Audrey Tautou
Audrey Tautou became the face of No. 5 that same year; the film follows Chanel from the orphanage to her first success as a designer.
Q 25Chanel was credited as La Maison Chanel on the costumes of which 1939 Jean Renoir film?
La Règle du jeu
La Règle du jeu flopped on release in July 1939, and that October the French government banned it as demoralizing.
Q 26Which poet is thought to have helped craft the famous maxims attributed to Chanel?
Pierre Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy burned many of his manuscripts in 1926 and withdrew to live beside a Benedictine abbey, yet stayed her close friend until his death in 1960.
Q 27Which event led Chanel to close her couture house for 15 years?
The outbreak of World War II
The outbreak of World War II led her to dismiss her workers and shut the couture house, which stayed closed until her comeback in 1954.
Q 28Which rival designer challenged Chanel in the 1930s with playful, surrealist-tinged fashions?
Elsa Schiaparelli
Elsa Schiaparelli worked with Salvador Dalí himself, turning out a lobster-print evening dress and a hat shaped like a shoe.
Q 29Where did Chanel live during the German occupation of Paris?
The Hotel Ritz
The Hotel Ritz doubled as a German headquarters during the occupation, and she died there in 1971.
Q 30Chanel's wartime lover Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage worked for what?
German military intelligence
German military intelligence, the Abwehr, employed the baron, and the liaison let her live in comfort and company through the occupation.