Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
The dark years, those of war. This film, which combines fiction and archives, tells the story of the unusual trajectory of a young man from the provinces. Prisoner of war, escaped at the age of 24, he found himself in Vichy, capital of the French state. A convinced Pétainist, he will become a leading resistance fighter.