(Coco Chanel's initial triumph was the innovative use of j...)
Coco Chanel's initial triumph was the innovative use of jersey fabric, a machine knit material manufactured for her by the firm Rodier. This fabric was traditionally relegated to the manufacture of undergarments. Chanel's early wool jersey traveling suit consisted of a cardigan jacket, and pleated skirt, paired with a low-belted pullover top.
1917
Chanel No. 5
(The first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle ...)
The first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. The chemical formula for the fragrance was compounded by French-Russian chemist and perfumer Ernest Beaux.
1921
Chanel suit
(The Chanel tweed suit was built for comfort and practical...)
The Chanel tweed suit was built for comfort and practicality. It consisted of a jacket and skirt in supple and light wool or mohair tweed and a blouse and jacket lining in jersey or silk.
1925
Little Black Dress
1926
The Chanel bag
(This handbag was inspired by soldier's bags. Its thin sho...)
This handbag was inspired by soldier's bags. Its thin shoulder strap allowed the user to have her hands free. The bag's design was informed by Mrs. Chanel's convent days and her love of the sporting world.
1929
Camellia
(The camellia came to be identified with The House of Chan...)
The camellia came to be identified with The House of Chanel; the designer first used it in 1933 as a decorative element on a white-trimmed black suit.
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a French fashion designer, businesswoman and founder of the Chanel brand, who ruled over Parisian haute couture for almost six decades. Her elegantly casual designs inspired women of fashion to abandon the complicated, uncomfortable clothes - such as petticoats and corsets - that were prevalent in 19th-century dress.
Background
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France, on August 19, 1883, although she claimed that she was born ten years later in the Auvergne region of France. Her mother, Eugénie Jeanne Devolle, was a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France. Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was Mrs. Devolle's second child with Albert Chanel; the first, Julia, was born less than a year earlier. Albert Chanel was an itinerant street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments, living a nomadic life, traveling to and from market towns.
When Mrs. Chanel was 12, her mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 32. Her father sent his two sons out to work as farm laborers and sent his three daughters to the Corrèze, in central France, to the convent of Aubazine, which ran an orphanage.
Education
Coco Chanel attended Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Having learned the art of sewing during her six years at Aubazine, Mrs. Chanel was able to find employment as a seamstress. When not plying her needle, she sang in a cabaret frequented by cavalry officers. In 1906, Coco Chanel was working in the spa resort town of Vichy. Vichy boasted a profusion of concert halls, theatres and cafés where she hoped to achieve success as a performer. When the Vichy season ended, Mrs. Chanel returned to Moulins.
At Moulins, Coco Chanel met the young French ex-cavalry officer and the wealthy textile heir Étienne Balsan. At the age of twenty-three, she became Mr. Balsan's mistress, supplanting the courtesan Émilienne d’Alençon as his new favorite. For the next three years, she lived with him in his château Royallieu near Compiègne. In 1908, Mrs. Chanel began an affair with one of Mr. Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel. Mr. Capel, a wealthy member of the English upper class, installed Chanel in an apartment in Paris and financed her first shops.
Mrs. Chanel started her career in fashion in 1910, making hats in Paris. She opened her first dress shop in Paris in 1914. Here Coco Chanel sold hats, jackets, sweaters, and the marinière, the sailor blouse. She closed it in 1939 at the onset of World War II. But in the period between the world wars she revolutionized women's fashion with her straight, simple, uncorseted, and, above all, comfortable "Chanel Look". In 1919 Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel released women from the tight corsets of the era and introduced them to comfortable jersey clothing.
In 1921, she opened what may be considered an early incarnation of the fashion boutique, featuring clothing, hats, and accessories, later expanded to offer jewellery and fragrance. She also popularized short hair for women in the 1920s and introduced shorter skirts. She created her famous Chanel No. 5 perfume in 1921. By 1927, Mrs. Chanel owned five properties on the rue Cambon.
The Chanel couture was a lucrative business enterprise, by 1935 employing 4,000 people. But the international economic depression of the 1930s had a negative impact on her company. It was the outbreak of World War II that led Coco Chanel to close her business. She fired her workers and shut down her shops. During the German occupation of France, Mrs. Chanel got involved with a German military officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage. After the war ended, she was interrogated about her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator. While not officially charged, Mrs. Chanel suffered in the court of public opinion. She left Paris, spending some years in Switzerland in a sort of exile.
In 1954, after fifteen years of retirement and just six months before her seventy-first birthday, she made a comeback and freed women once again from highly structured, constricting designs-this time the clothing of the "New Look". Critics were lukewarm, but women, particularly American women, loved her casual, softly shaped clothes and snapped them up. These designs ushered in a new relaxation in fashion that continues today.
She had a knack for knowing what women wanted, and women responded enthusiastically. In the 1950s her famous Chanel suit-a collarless, braid-trimmed cardigan jacket and slim, graceful skirt was an enormous hit. She also popularized pea jackets and bell-bottom trousers plus magnificent jewelry worn with sportswear. In 1969 Coco Chanel's life was the basis for Coco, a Broadway musical starring Katharine Hepburn.
(The camellia came to be identified with The House of Chan...)
1933
Jersey Outfits
(Coco Chanel's initial triumph was the innovative use of j...)
1917
Chanel No. 5
(The first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle ...)
1921
Chanel suit
(The Chanel tweed suit was built for comfort and practical...)
1925
The Chanel bag
(This handbag was inspired by soldier's bags. Its thin sho...)
1929
Little Black Dress
1926
Views
Her visceral loathing of Jews inculcated by her convent years, and sharpened by her aristocratic associations over time, had solidified her right-wing beliefs. She shared with most of her circle the conviction that Jews and liberal politicians were a Bolshevik threat to Europe.
Quotations:
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
"Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury."
"A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future."
"Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door."
"Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions."
"Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity."
"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."
"Fashion fades, only style remains the same."
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."
"There are too many men in this business, and they don't know how to make clothes for women. All this fantastic pinching and puffing. How can a woman wear a dress that's cut so she can't lift up her arm to pick up a telephone?"
Personality
According to Edmonde Charles-Roux, Mrs. Chanel had become tyrannical and extremely lonely late in life.
Connections
Chanel was the mistress of some of the most influential men of her time, but she never married. She had significant relationships with the poet Pierre Reverdy and the illustrator and designer Paul Iribe. After her romance with Mr. Reverdy ended in 1926, they maintained a friendship that lasted some forty years.