Coco Chanel.
Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
One of the most innovative fashion designers Coco Chanel was instrumental in defining
feminine style and dress during the 20th Century. Her ideas were revolutionary; in particular she
often took traditionally male clothes and redesigned them for the benefit of women. Listed by
TIME magazine as one of the top100 influential people of twentieth Century.
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion
has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. "
- Coco Chanel
1883-1971.
French modernist designer.
Patterns of simplicity.
Style revolutionised Women's clothing.
Created the brand ‘Chanel’
She also created her famous Chanel No.5 scent and this has been a lasting trademark.
Most sources suggest she was born in 1883, though this was a closely guarded fact with
Coco not keen on revealing her birth date.
Orphaned from an early age.
She opened a shop in 1912.
It was in the post war period that she felt the need for a revolution in women's clothes.
She began by liberating women from the bondage of the corset and encouraged a casual
but elegant range of clothes.
In 1938 she retired from the fashion business.
However, 16 years later she made a determined comeback after becoming fed up at
seeing French fashion become dominated by men.
It was this that made her the most recognisable name in world fashion.
Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel, one of the greatest
fashion designers of the 20th century.
Coco Chanel Biography - Childhood.
Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel was born on August 20, 1883 as a second child of an
unmarried couple. Her father was a small-wares peddler, her mother came from a
family of a peasant. A little girl was named Gabrielle Chanel. Her mother died
when Chanel was twelve years old. One week later she was abandoned by her
father, who left her to be raised by the nuns in a provincial orphanage.
Coco Chanel Biography - Beginning of her career
Several years passed at school before the young girl would try to make a start. At
first she began as a shopkeeper specializing in linens and small wares. Later she
would try to sing and dance, with an idea to make a career in the theatre. These
attempts would not bring her any luck, with an exception to the nickname Coco
acquired at that time. The nickname "Coco" had been given to her by her
audience for her songs “Ko Ko Ri Ko” and “Qui qu’a vu Coco”.
At the age of twenty-two Coco Chanel met Etienne Balsan, a gentlemen horse
breeder and riding enthusiast, and accepted his proposal to live together. She
would enjoy her life in a castle, even though she would never get used to her
position of an official mistress. What did she really want? To make a career for
herself as a modiste – a milliner.
Coco Chanel would soon meet another person who would find a merit in her idea
and would help her change her life completely. This was an Englishman Arthur
Capel, known to his friends as “Boy”. She could have never before imagined
herself together with a man who was so enterprising, athletic and, despite his
youth, already an important businessman. He helped Chanel to open her first
milliner shop in Paris in 1910, and later in 1913 her boutique in Deauville, France.
Coco Chanel Biography - The Women Entrepreneur
Once she opened her business and began to apply her taste and capacities to it,
she would change into a woman entrepreneur forever Nothing would stop her:
not the lack of experience, not even the war that soon exploded. For the rest of
her life she would work as both craftsman and businesswoman, implementing her
own view of the art of dressing on her ever expanding clientele..
.
She started as a hat maker to the divas, and they would reveal her name to
Paris…
Her business would soon grow into something never known in the history.
Traditionally, dressmakers had never been part of "society". But Coco Chanel
changed that. Coco Chanel became a magnetic person, an international figure
invited everywhere. It did not seem to surprise her at all. She commented: “I did
not go into society because I had to design clothes. I designed clothes precisely
because I did go out, because I was the first to live the life of this century…”
Coco Chanel received the attention of high-born, aristocratic suitors, like Grand
Duke Dimitri of Russia and Duke of Westminster. She was surrounded by the
crème de la crème of the society, the most famous women and men of her time.
At the age of fifty-five, Coco Chanel was in the prime of her beauty. Her face, like
her figure, had reached their ultimate refinement. She had never dressed with
more invention or with a greater perfection. At that time she was the most
admired and most invited… People proved to be more interested in her face…
photographers were passionate about it. These were the golden years in Coco
Chanel's biography...
Coco Chanel Biography - Years without work
Chanel closed her salon almost immediately after war (World War II) had been
declared. She decided there was no time for fashion. Because of the rumors of
her romantic involvement with a high ranking German officer, she was arrested in
September 1944, at the order of the Committee of Public Morals. A few hours
later, she was released, but shortly thereafter, she left for Switzerland, where she
lived for almost ten years.
Coco Chanel Biography - a New Start
Years passed in oblivion... The pre-war fashion design had been entirely
dominated by women like Chanel, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, Vionnet. After the war it
fell into the hands of men - Balenciaga, Dior. The success of Christian Dior in the
early fifties was seemingly a confirmation of the fact that there was no way back
for Chanel after the long absence.
In 1953 Chanel made a decision to reopen her salon the following year. She was
at that time more than seventy years old. On February 5, 1954 (5th chosen by
her as her lucky number) the reopening took place. The verdict of critics was
ferocious. “A fiasco,” was how the Daily Mail opened their story. Chanel remained
unimpressed by the criticism. It took her three years to be back on top again.
Coco Chanel design concept remained basically unchanged. She put it simple: "A
dress isn't right unless the arm lifts easily...Elegance in clothes means freedom to
move freely."
The new life began for Chanel. Coco Chanel had changed the way women dressed
and made her style dominant once and forever again.
“I don’t like people talking about the Chanel fashion,”- she once said.
“Chanel – above all else, is a style. Fashion, you see, goes out of fashion.
Style never.”
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