1. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, 1883-1971. “Fashion changes, style remains.”
Submitted by Edla Brabham. February, 2011. Gabrielle Chanel was perhaps the
most ...
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Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, 1883-1971 “Fashion changes, style remains.” Submitted by Edla Brabham February, 2011
Gabrielle Chanel was perhaps the most influential fashion designer of the 20th century, despite no formal training in fashion or design.
She introduced menswear-inspired fashions for women,
comfortable skirt suits, the “little black dress,” and women’s’ trousers, and she made fashionable suntanned skin, costume jewelry, red lipstick, short hair, and her timeless perfume, Chanel No. 5. Her influence stemmed from her sensitivity to the changing role of women in society, and her genius in finding inspiration from many sources.
Chanel was born into poverty in Samur, France, on August 20, 1883. When she was six years old, her mother died, and her father left her in a convent orphanage. There the nuns taught her to sew.
The austerity of the architecture, the nuns’ habits, and children’s uniforms may have
influenced her later designs and her preference for black, white and beige. After she left the convent at the age of eighteen, Gabrielle worked as a seamstress and cabaret singer, and adopted the nickname “Coco.” She began the first of a lifelong series of celebrated liaisons with prominent men, several of whom supported her financially, established her in business, and introduced her into high society, theatrical, and artistic circles. Chanel opened a millinery shop in Paris in 1910, followed by boutiques in the fashionable seaside resorts at Deauville (1913) and Biarritz (1915). One of her earliest successes was a jersey dress; she always claimed that she made the first version by cutting down the front of one of her lover’s sweaters and adding a collar and bow. Jersey remained one of her signature fabrics to the end of her life.
Chanel’s use of machine-made wool jersey was inspired, but made partly out of necessity, because it was readily available and inexpensive. Previously used in men’s underwear, its softness and drape were ideal for Chanel’s designs. During the First World War, Chanel made practical, two-piece jersey suits worn without corsets and stays, with shorter and fuller skirts than had previously been in vogue, allowing women to move freely. Chanel charged exorbitant prices for the jersey ensembles that were in demand by wealthy and fashionable women who were involved in war work, walking, bicycling, and riding buses while their husbands and servants were away at war. (Wallach, pp. 28-29.) By the age of thirty-two, Coco Chanel was famous and independently wealthy.
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Figure 1: Chanel Jersey suit, 1915. [From Wallach, p. 28]
After World War I, there was a reaction in society and in the arts against established values and restrictions, which the war had made meaningless. 533.)
(Janson p.
Chanel understood the theories of Dadaism and Cubism; her minimalist approach to
fashion was harmonious with their abstract aesthetic. (Wallach, p.42.) In 1922, Chanel worked with Pablo Picasso on a production of Jean Cocteau’s “Antigone,” for which she designed the costumes and he created the sets. In 1924, Chanel worked again with Picasso on a Ballet Russe production of “LeTrain Bleu.” In 1989/1990, the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted an exhibit, “Cubism and Fashion,” that included designs by Chanel. Many of Chanel’s ideas were adapted from the accoutrements of the men in her life. In 1920 she met the Grand Duke Dimitri, the grandson of Czar Alexander II; nearly destitute, he had been exiled from Russia. Dimitri introduced Chanel to his sister and other Russian exiles, who were able to support themselves by doing elaborate embroidery for Chanel. Her “Russian Look” borrowed elements from Russian peasant blouses and military uniforms. Dimitri may also have suggested the fragrance, similar to a scent that he recalled from his youth, that became Chanel No. 5. He introduced Coco to the perfumer Ernest Beaux, another exile, who knew the earlier formula. Chanel’s perfume, introduced in 1920, recalls the scent of the yellow soap used to scrub Chanel’s convent orphanage, the lavender scented linens, and the flowers in the gardens that surrounded the convent. Chanel insisted that her scent smell “clean.” (Mazzeo, pp. 6-7.) The number five had been a talisman from her childhood, and the scent she chose from among several samples was the fifth. Inspired by a man’s whiskey decanter, Chanel No. 5’s square modernist bottle was a departure from the ornate bottles used by other perfumers. (Mazzeo, p. 102).
3 After affairs with composer Igor Stravinsky and poet Pierre Reverdy, a friend of Pablo Picasso, in 1924 Coco Chanel met the 2d Duke of Westminster, the wealthiest man in Britain, and friend of Winston Churchill. Their affair lasted six years, during which Chanel acted as hostess aboard his yacht and at his grand houses in Britain. The Duke lavished jewels on Chanel, and ropes of pearls became her personal signature. She designed costume jewelry inspired by her own pieces, and promoted wearing genuine and costume pieces, particularly chains and brooches, together. Chanel appropriated the striped jerseys, bell-bottomed trousers and berets worn by the crew of the Duke’s yacht, [Fig. 2], the vests worn by his stable hands, and gentlemen’s riding breeches, blazers and cardigans. She borrowed the Duke’s own sportswear when she joined him in hunting and fishing, often with Winston Churchill. Chanel’s “English Look” of the 1920’s featured tweed suits and blazers, as well as long cardigans in argyle, jacquard and Fair Isle knits. [Fig.3]
Figure 2: Coco Chanel in a sailor’s jersey and bell bottoms, 1929. [From Picardie, p. 180.]
Figure 3: Coco Chanel in jacquard knit suit with cardigan, 1929. [ From http://blogspot.com/76KGr3eveAE.]
4 Coco Chanel dominated fashion in the 1920’s. Always her own best model, with her slim, boyish figure, bobbed hair, and suntanned skin, she was the image of the active, confident, modern woman. After she borrowed the Duke of Westminster’s polo coat on a chilly day, women around the world wore polo coats. When she wore sweaters, trousers, sandals and pearls on the beaches of southern France, she created her “Riviera Look.” [Fig. 5.] In 1925 Chanel’s place in the world of design was recognized by her inclusion in the French pavilion at L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris that focused on modernist, streamlined design. The term “Art Deco” was derived from the name of the exposition. Black had previously been reserved for mourning, but in 1926, Chanel introduced her “little black dress.”
The American
edition of Vogue magazine, comparing it to the Model T, called it the “Ford of dresses,” anticipating its universal popularity. [Fig.4]
Figure 4: Chanel’s “Ford” dress, in American Vogue, October,1926. [From Wallach, p. 80.]
Figure 5: The “Riviera Look,” with trousers, sandals and pearls. Chanel with dancer Serge Lifar, c. 1929. [From Picardie, p. 200.]
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In 1931, the American film producer Samuel Goldwyn paid Chanel a million dollars to design costumes for his motion pictures, but her understated designs did not translate successfully to the big screen, and she returned to France from Hollywood. Long a promoter of costume jewelry, in 1932 Chanel introduced a collection of spectacular diamond jewelry that she designed with her current lover Paul Iribe, a French journalist, artist and fashion illustrator. Her signature jersey ensembles were still important, but there were also gypsy skirts, bolero jackets, and glamorous evening gowns in chiffon, gold lame, sequins and lace. [Fig 6.] In 1933 Chanel presented a couture collection entirely in white.
Figure 6: Coco Chanel in a 1930’s evening gown of brocade and chiffon, with bolero jacket. [From Wallach, p. 113.]
In the 1930s, for the first time Chanel had a real competitor in Elsa Schiaparelli, some of whose extravagant designs reflected the Surrealist movement in art and captured the attention of the fashion press.
Chanel’s business declined
during the Depression, and she faced labor problems in 1936 when her employees struck for higher wages. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II Chanel closed her couture house and fired her workers. (Perfume and accessories continued to be sold in her boutiques.) Chanel had an affair with a young Nazi officer and spy, and continued, with the permission of the Germans, to live in her apartment at the Ritz Hotel during the Nazi occupation of Paris. After the war Chanel was interrogated, but although she was not charged with collaboration, the French considered her a Nazi sympathizer. In 1945 she moved to Switzerland, where she lived for several years in selfimposed exile. Partly motivated by her contempt for Christian Dior’s “New Look,” which featured the kind of wasp-waisted corsets and boned bodices from which she had freed women decades earlier,
6 Chanel decided to make a Paris comeback in 1954, at the age of seventy. She designed fashions that she considered appropriate for the active post-World War II woman, a line of easy suits and soft cocktail and evening dresses. Despite great anticipation and publicity, the show was called a “fiasco” by the Paris fashion critics, who dismissed the styles as outdated and unimaginative. However, after features in American Vogue and Life magazines in 1954, the collection was embraced by American women, who were especially enthusiastic about the suits. The Chanel suit, of jersey or tweed, was elegant but comfortable, allowing freedom of movement, with a boxy jacket and slim skirt. The jackets, typically trimmed with braid and distinctive buttons, featured functional pockets and small gold chains sewed into their hems to maintain their shape. [Fig. 7.]
Figure 7: Chanel fitting one of her 1950’s suits, by Karl Lagerfeld. [From Picardie, p. 271.]
Jacqueline
Kennedy
was
one
of
Chanel’s
most
prominent customers in the 1960’s, but not always publicly.
Mrs. Kennedy had frequented the couture
houses of Paris, but when John F. Kennedy ran for president, her wardrobe became a campaign issue. When her husband was elected and she preferred to be
seen
wearing
American-made
clothes,
Mrs.
Kennedy had fashions made in New York from designs, fabric, trim and buttons sent from Chanel’s salon in Paris. (Picardie, p. 304). The pink boucle suit that Mrs. Kennedy wore when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963 was by Chanel. At Mrs. Kennedy’s insistence, the blood-stained suit was never cleaned, and is stored in the National Archives of the United States. Chanel rejected the fashion revolution of the 1960’s, and was particularly scornful of women over thirty who wore mini-skirts. “I hate the old little girls.” Chanel never designed skirts that were shorter than mid-knee. She was making clothes for women, she said, not teenagers. (Madsen, p. 300.) The timeless Chanel look was in great demand and often copied, to Coco Chanel’s delight; she knew that no one else could duplicate her cut and workmanship.
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Figure 8: Chanel jersey suit, 1960’s. [From Wallach, p. 154,]
By now in her eighties, Chanel remained energetic and devoted to her career, and she continued to work throughout the 1960’s. Her suit remained the choice of the well-dressed woman.[Fig. 8.] Gabrielle Chanel died in her apartment at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on January 10, 1971, at the age of eighty-seven. She had spent the day before her death working on a new fall couture collection.
Sources Brower, Brock. “Chez Chanel.” Smithsonian, Vol.32 (4), July, 2001, pp. 60-68. Janson, H.W. History of Art. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1969. Madsen, Axel. Chanel, a Woman of Her Own. NY, Henry Holt and Co. 1991 Mazzeo, Tijar J. The Secret of Chanel No. 5; the Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous
Fragrance. NY, HarperCollins, 2011. Picardie, Justine. Coco Chanel; the Legend and the Life. NY, HarperCollins, 2010. Wallach, Janet. Chanel; Her Style and Her Life. NY, Doubleday, 1998.
