“Fashionwonder of the world”

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel

CHANEL

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“

She was shrewd, chic and on

the cutting edge. The clothes

She created changed the way

women looked and how they

looked at themselves.

In order to be imeplaceable one must always be different.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

3–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Time 100

5–6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Start: Designer Gabrielle Boneur Chanel

7–8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Little Black Dress

9–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Present: Designer Karl Lagerfeld

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Coco Chanel wasn’t just ahead

of her time. She was ahead of

herself. If one looks at the work of

contemporary fashion designers

as different from one another as

Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, Miuccia

Prada, Jil Sander and Donatella

Versace, one sees that many of their

strategies echo what Chanel did.

The way, 75 years ago, she mixed

up the vocabulary of male and

female clothes and created fashion

that offered the wearer a feeling

of hidden luxury rather than

ostentation are just two examples

of how her taste and sense

of style overlap with today’s

fashion. Chanel would not

have defined herself as a feminist

— in fact, she consistently spoke of

femininity rather than of feminism

— yet her work is unquestionably

part of the liberation of women. She

threw out a life jacket, as it were, to

women not once but twice, during

two distinct periods decades apart:

the 1920s and the ‘50s. She not

only appropriated styles, fabrics

and articles of clothing that were

worn by men but also, beginning

with how she dressed herself,

appropriated sports clothes as part

of the language of fashion. One can

see how her style evolved out of

necessity and defiance. She couldn’t

afford the fashionable clothes of

the period — so she rejected them

and made her own, using, say, the

sports jackets and ties that were

everyday male attire around the

racetrack, where she was climbing

her first social ladders.

Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

THE TIME 100: COCO CHANEL

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She would steadfastly claim that

when her mother died, her father

sailed for America and she was

sent to live with two cold-hearted

spinster aunts. She even claimed to

have been born in 1893 as opposed

to 1883, and that her mother had

died when Coco was 6, instead

of twelve. She never married. All

this was done in order to diminish

the stigma that poverty and

orphanhood bestowed

upon unfortunates in nineteenth

century France.

Coco Chanel and Salvador Dalí

were considered to be a ‘dream

couple’ in the society in the Europe

of the 1930s. But there was no

chance for this international fashion

queen, since Dali’s lover Gala did

not allow any escapades to the

young 33 years old painter. Dalí

is shown here with the famous

fashion designer Coco Chanel in

1937 in her residence in Paris. It

is one of the few photographs of

the King of Surrealism without

an acting pose. Later in life, Coco

Chanel concocted an elaborate false

history for her humble beginnings.

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The Dream Couple

Among all

the fashion

designers

of the twentieth century, Coco

Chanel stands out as the most

influential and innovative. In the

1920’s George Bernard Shaw called

her one of the two most important

women living at that time, the other

being Marie Curie. Independent,

elegant, and attractive, chanel

revolutionized fashion for women

by borrowing from the clothes she

found in her paramours’ closets.

She belted their jackets and

sweaters and paired them with

skirts to make comfortable suits for

working women. She also invented

day-into-night clothing and layered

her plain jersey knits with pearl

necklaces and faux jewels, so that in

spite of the simplicity of her designs,

the clothes always projected an aura

of sophistication.

Through her use of

utilitarian fabrics and

introduction of the three-piece

cardigan suit, skirts, trousers,

jackets, and shirts, she is credited

with establishing the foundations

of modern women’s fashion.

Unlike other designers of the time,

Chanel became the exemplar for

her own creations: “I am first,

and finally, my only model,” she

announced. Because her image

was so powerful, and her presence

and photographs so ubiquitous,

Chanel was able to popularize

these new fashions. “In her career

she established such a distinctive

personal style and her clothes are

readily recognizable,” Harold Koda,

curator of the Costume Institute at

the Metropolitan Museum of art in

New York, said in a 1989 interview.

“And despite the fact that she was

the first modern woman design and

modernist, she was involeved in the

use of decrotative effects.

BEFORE THE CHANEL EMPIRE

“Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions”

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Her use of braid, gilt buttons, band

trim, and her mix of costume

and real jewlery are all signature

elements.” So closely connected

was Chanel with the “Chanel look”

that women emulated her whims.

In some rare archival footage that

appears in a 1986 documentary

on the designer, she boasted: “If I

cut my hair, other did likewise. If

I shortened my dresses slightly, so

did everyone else.” She was also the

first designer to market a perfume

bearing her own name, with the

launch of Chanel No. 5 in 1921.

Chanel’s creations reflect her

inimitable resilience and ingenuity.

She was born into poverty in 1883,

and her mother died when she was

twelve. Her father was incapable of

taking care of her, so Chanel spent

her early days in an orphanage.

At the age of seventeen she was sent

as a charity student to a convent

boarding school, where she learned

to sew. As she began making

clothes for herself, she launched a

career. When Chanel realized that

her boyfriend, the shipping and

coal magnate Arthur Capel, would

not marry her, she asked him to

invest in her business instead. He

agreed, and with additional funding

from a prior wealthy suitor, Etienne

Balsan, Chanel opened a hat shop

in Paris in 1909. Three years later,

Chanel opened

her first dress

shop in Deuville;

boutiques in

Biarritz and Paris

soon followed. She

gained recognition as an important

designer in 1913, and with the

pragmatic clothing demands of

World War I, Chanel proved to

have been prescient: her simple and

classic designs were wildly popular

to the 1920’s.

I “If i cut my hair, others did likewise. If I shortened my dresses slightly, so did everyone else”

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Independent, Elegant, and Attractive

THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS

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It remains the height of chicness.

Since Coco Chanel introduced it

in 1926, the little black dress has

become the epitome of timeless

fashion. It is the answer to every

“What should I wear to...” question

from cocktail parties to casinos to

class reunions. As a concept, the

little black dress has even moved on

to represent an ideal of a perfectly

simple, yet sexy object.

Even the computer industry

recognizes the need to inject a bit

of “little black dress” into its design

and marketing. A fashion anomaly,

the concept of the little black dress

never changes, much unlike the

trend-crazed industry. It remains

the height of chicness. It knows

no social, style or size boundaries.

Whether it costs $1,000 or $50, is

a size 2 or a size 22, it is still a little

black dress.

A little black dress is an evening or

cocktail dress, cut simply and often

with a short skirt, originally made

popular in the 1920s by the fashion

designer Coco Chanel. Intended by

Chanel to be long-lasting, versatile,

affordable, accessible to the widest

market possible and in a neutral

color, its continued ubiquity is

such that many refer to it by its

abbreviation, LBD. The “little black

dress” is considered essential to

a complete wardrobe by many

women and fashion observers, who

believe it a “rule of fashion” that

every woman should own a simple,

elegant black dress that can be

dressed up or down depending

on the occasion: for example,

worn with a jacket and pumps for

daytime businesswear or with more

ornate jewelry and accessories for

evening. Because it is meant to be a

staple of the wardrobe for a number

of years, the style of the little black

dress ideally should as simple as

possible: a short black dress that is

too clearly part of a trend would

not qualify because it would soon

appear dated.

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CHANEL DESIGNER: KARL LAGERFELD

In 1967, Lagerfeld returned to

fashion, joining Fendi as a design

consultant. In the Seventies,

however, his name was more

closely associated with the house

of Chloe, where he was given

carte blanche to produce exquisite

floaty and feminine ready-to-wear

collections which claimed to rival

contemporary couture.

He produced his last collection

for Chloe - now designed by

Phoebe Philo - in 1983 to move

to Chanel (though he did return

briefly in 1993, to replace outgoing

designer Martine Sitbon). In 1983,

Karl Lagerfeld revived the brand

to must-have status with added

glamour and sexiness. He’s been

designing the collection ever since.

Karl Lagerfeld is widely recognized

as one of the most influential

fashion designers of the late

20th century. He has collaborated

with a variety of different fashion

labels, with Chloé, Fendi and

Chanel the most notable. But

with contracts with companies

internationally, he has probably

built the most complicated resume

of any designer.

The New Face of Chanel

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Text&Images were taken from: http://um.chanel.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Chanel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanel

http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk

http://womenshistory.about.com

http://images.google.com/imgres

http://www.artcyclopedia.com

http://www.time.com/time/time100/artists

“Elegance is not the prerogative of Those who have just escaped from Adolescence, but of those who have Already taken possession of their future.”