Wild Yella

star turns. The money earned was what they managed to accumulate when the plate was passed among the audience in appreciation of their performance. It was at this time that Gabrielle acquired the name "Coco", possibly based on two popular songs with which she became identified, "Ko Ko Ri Ko", and "Qui qu'a vu Coco", or it was an allusion to the French word for kept woman, cocotte.[11] As cafe entertainer, Chanel radiated a juvenile allure that tantalized the military habitués of the cabaret.[9]
The year 1906 found Chanel in the spa resort town of Vichy. Vichy boasted a profusion of concert halls, theatres and cafes where Chanel hoped to find success as a performer. Chanel's youth and physical charms impressed those for whom she auditioned, but her singing voice was marginal and she failed to find stage work.[12] Obliged to find employment, she took work at the "Grande Grille", where as a donneuse d'eau she was one of the females whose job it was to dispense glasses of the purportedly curative mineral water for which Vichy was renowned.[13] When the Vichy season ended, Chanel returned to Moulins, and her former haunt "La Rotonde". She now realized that a serious stage career was not in her future.[14]
First patrons[edit]
Balsan and Capel[edit]

Chanel and Arthur "Boy" Capel, caricature by Sem, 1913.

Gabrielle Dorziat modelling a Chanel hat, May 1912. Published in Les Modes.
It was at Moulins that Chanel met the young French ex-cavalry officer and the wealthy textile heir Étienne Balsan. At the age twenty-three, Chanel became Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d'Alençon as his new favorite.[15] For the next three years, she lived with him in his chateau Royallieu near Compiègne, an area known for its wooded equestrian paths and the hunting life.[16] It was a life style of self-indulgence, Balsan's wealth and leisure allowing the cultivation of a social who reveled in partying and the gratification of human appetites with all the