Edmonde Charles-Roux's biography, first published in France as L'Irrégulière in 1974, is the standard treatment of Chanel's life. Charles-Roux was Chanel's close friend and her chosen official biographer, and the book draws on access no other biographer had. Nancy Amphoux's English translation, published by Harvill Secker under the full title Chanel: Her Life, Her World, and the Woman Behind the Legend She Herself Created, preserves the exhaustively researched account that established the biographical record of Chanel.
Charles-Roux writes from inside Chanel's world — she was a friend and the chosen official biographer — which gives the book an intimacy no other biography has but also means it carries Chanel's own framing of her life more than the later, more critical biographies. For founders, this is the original, authoritative account against which all subsequent work measures itself. The English rendering of its title — 'the woman behind the legend she herself created' — could serve as the epigraph for the entire problem of writing about a founder who actively manufactured her own story.
The book is also useful as a primary document of how a founder's close associates see the story: Charles-Roux treats Chanel's wartime period with more restraint than Vaughan or Garelick do, consistent with her role as friend-biographer. Reading it alongside the more archivally-based accounts makes visible the shape of what a founder's inner circle protects.