Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. Along with Paul Poiret, Chanel was credited with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing the acceptance of a sportive, casual chic as the feminine standard in the post-World War I era. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel's influence extended beyond couture clothing. Her design aesthetic was realized in jewelry, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product.
Chanel was known for her lifelong determination, ambition, and energy which she applied to her professional and social life. She achieved both success as a business woman and social prominence thanks to the connections she made through her work.
Clothes, for Coco Channel, were for freedom and forgetting. Women should be able to walk, to drive, to ride their bicycles and to forget what they are wearing. She replaced whalebone corsets and bird’s nest hats with loose trousers, Breton tops and sailor blouses, clothes that “women can live in, breath in, feel comfortable in and look young in”. The baroque evening gown was exchanged for that little black dress, worn with a single string of pearls.
“Extravagant things didn’t suit me,” Chanel said, meaning that extravagant things didn’t suit any woman. Black, however, “wipes out everything else around”. It is the “absence of colours”, Chanel explained in one of her dazzling artistic statements, which has “absolute beauty”.
But the figure who introduced simplicity into women’s wardrobes was far from simple herself. Gabrielle Chanel was born in a poorhouse in 1883; her parents were unmarried and, according to Chanel, when she was six, her mother, Jeanne, died of tuberculosis.According to Chanel, her father then left her in the care of two spinster aunts; he in fact placed her in a convent in the medieval village of Aubazine. Throughout her life, Chanel referred to herself as a poor child . “I don’t know anything more terrifying than the family,” Chanel once said, “you’re born in it, not of it”, and she reworked her own past history as she would remodel an outfit, trimming, unpicking, restitching. The austerity and purity of her life in the convent, however, found its way into her designs. Aged 18, Chanel left the nuns and worked in Moulins as a cabaret singer. During these years, when asked if she was happy or unhappy, she replied that she was neither; she was “hiding”, and it may have been now that Gabrielle became Coco.
During the 1920s, Coco Chanel became the first designer to create loose women's jerseys, traditionally used for men's underwear, creating a relaxed style for women ignoring the stiff corseted look of the time. They soon became very popular with clients, a post-war generation of women for whom the corseted restricted clothing seemed old-fashioned and impractical. By the 1920s, Maison Chanel was established at 31, Rue Cambon in Paris (which remains its headquarters to this day) and become a fashion force to be reckoned with. Chanel became a style icon herself with her striking bob haircut and tan placing her at the cutting edge of modern style.
In 1922, she launched the fragrance Chanel No. 5, which remains popular to this day. Two years later, Pierre Wertheimer became her business partner. In 1925, Chanel launched her signature cardigan jacket, and the following year matched its success with her little black dress. Both items continue to be a staple part of every Chanel collection. During World War II, Chanel was a nurse, although her post-war popularity was greatly diminished by her affair with a Nazi officer during the conflict and she moved to Switzerland to escape the controversy.However, she ended this self-imposed exile in 1954, returning to Paris when she took on Christian Dior's overtly feminine New Look. She expanded the signature style with the introduction of pea jackets and bell-bottoms for women. Her new collection, panned by the press in Europe, was a hit in the United States.
Coco Chanel worked until her death in 1971 at the age of 88, spending her last moments in the style she had become accustomed to at her opulent private apartment in The Ritz.
Karl Lagerfeld has been chief designer of Chanel's fashion house since 1982. His ability to continuously mine the Chanel archive for inspiration testifies to the importance of Coco Chanel's contribution to the world of fashion.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Chanel was known for her lifelong determination, ambition, and energy which she applied to her professional and social life. She achieved both success as a business woman and social prominence thanks to the connections she made through her work.
Clothes, for Coco Channel, were for freedom and forgetting. Women should be able to walk, to drive, to ride their bicycles and to forget what they are wearing. She replaced whalebone corsets and bird’s nest hats with loose trousers, Breton tops and sailor blouses, clothes that “women can live in, breath in, feel comfortable in and look young in”. The baroque evening gown was exchanged for that little black dress, worn with a single string of pearls.
“Extravagant things didn’t suit me,” Chanel said, meaning that extravagant things didn’t suit any woman. Black, however, “wipes out everything else around”. It is the “absence of colours”, Chanel explained in one of her dazzling artistic statements, which has “absolute beauty”.
But the figure who introduced simplicity into women’s wardrobes was far from simple herself. Gabrielle Chanel was born in a poorhouse in 1883; her parents were unmarried and, according to Chanel, when she was six, her mother, Jeanne, died of tuberculosis.According to Chanel, her father then left her in the care of two spinster aunts; he in fact placed her in a convent in the medieval village of Aubazine. Throughout her life, Chanel referred to herself as a poor child . “I don’t know anything more terrifying than the family,” Chanel once said, “you’re born in it, not of it”, and she reworked her own past history as she would remodel an outfit, trimming, unpicking, restitching. The austerity and purity of her life in the convent, however, found its way into her designs. Aged 18, Chanel left the nuns and worked in Moulins as a cabaret singer. During these years, when asked if she was happy or unhappy, she replied that she was neither; she was “hiding”, and it may have been now that Gabrielle became Coco.
During the 1920s, Coco Chanel became the first designer to create loose women's jerseys, traditionally used for men's underwear, creating a relaxed style for women ignoring the stiff corseted look of the time. They soon became very popular with clients, a post-war generation of women for whom the corseted restricted clothing seemed old-fashioned and impractical. By the 1920s, Maison Chanel was established at 31, Rue Cambon in Paris (which remains its headquarters to this day) and become a fashion force to be reckoned with. Chanel became a style icon herself with her striking bob haircut and tan placing her at the cutting edge of modern style.
In 1922, she launched the fragrance Chanel No. 5, which remains popular to this day. Two years later, Pierre Wertheimer became her business partner. In 1925, Chanel launched her signature cardigan jacket, and the following year matched its success with her little black dress. Both items continue to be a staple part of every Chanel collection. During World War II, Chanel was a nurse, although her post-war popularity was greatly diminished by her affair with a Nazi officer during the conflict and she moved to Switzerland to escape the controversy.However, she ended this self-imposed exile in 1954, returning to Paris when she took on Christian Dior's overtly feminine New Look. She expanded the signature style with the introduction of pea jackets and bell-bottoms for women. Her new collection, panned by the press in Europe, was a hit in the United States.
Coco Chanel worked until her death in 1971 at the age of 88, spending her last moments in the style she had become accustomed to at her opulent private apartment in The Ritz.
Karl Lagerfeld has been chief designer of Chanel's fashion house since 1982. His ability to continuously mine the Chanel archive for inspiration testifies to the importance of Coco Chanel's contribution to the world of fashion.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN