Defining style: Sophisticated

 
Vintage Chanel (Left); Chanel 100 years later (Right)


Chanel No. I

Just her name was enough to define a pair of shoes, a hat, a pocketbook, a suit, perfume, jewelry-an entire look. It conveyed prestige, quality, impeccable taste and unmistakable style. It was a sign of excellence. Coco Chanel had no patience and too much talent, for anything less. By her death last week at 87, the French couturiere had long since established herself as the 20th century's single most important arbiter of fashion.

Her innovations were basic to the wardrobes of generations of women: jersey suits and dresses, the draped turban, the chemise, pleated skirts, the jumper, turtleneck sweaters, the cardigan suit, the blazer, the little black dress, the sling pump, strapless dresses, the trench coat. Sometimes, the determining factor was practicality: Chanel wore bell-bottom trousers in Venice, the better to climb in and out of gondolas and started the pants revolution. Sometimes, it was purely accidental: after singeing her hair, she cut it off completely, made an appearance at the Paris Opéra, and started the craze for bobbed hair. But always, a Chanel idea commanded respect.

Ostrich-Boa Hats. Born outside Paris in 1883, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (never called anything but Coco for "Little Pet") was orphaned at six and raised in the desolate province of Auvergne by two aunts. From them, she learned that little girls should sew, sit up straight and speak politely; for sewing, a skill that forever eluded her, Coco substituted horseback riding. From Etienne Balsan, a millionaire cavalry officer who brought her to Paris at 16, Coco acquired the habits and tastes of the wealthy. She liked them--all but the ladies' predilection for ostrich -boa-draped hats. To provide an alternative, she opened a millinery boutique in Deauville,won enough acclaim to set up shop in Paris in 1914.

She started with several hats and "one dress, but a tasteful dress," added sweaters, and within five years had made Maison Chanel a fashion house to reckon with. Coco introduced the tricot sailor frock and the pullover sweater, unearthed wool jersey from its longtime service as underwear fabric and put it to use in soft, clinging dresses. She ushered in gypsy skirts, embroidered silk blouses and accompanying shawls. Even then, Chanel clothes were as high-priced as any Paris couturier's: but only Chanel delighted in having her styles copied--and made accessible at low cost to millions.

"There is time for work. And time for love." said Coco Chanel. "That leaves no other time." In the '20s, Chanel filled her off-hours with Arthur ("Boy") Capel, a wealthy English polo player whose lavish gifts of jewels served as the keystones of Coco's astonishing collection, and whose blazer--lent to the designer on a chilly day at the polo grounds--became the source of her famous box jacket. From the Duke of Westminster, Chanel's most renowned amour, came more jewels: these she had copied, setting off the costume-jewelry vogue. With a personal fortune rumored by then to be close to $15 million--most of it the result of the pungent success of Chanel No. 5 --the designer calculated that she had little to gain, and quite a name to lose, from marriage to the Duke. So she finally turned him down, explaining with characteristic bluntness. "There are a lot of duchesses, but only One Coco Chanel."

Cool Reception. In 1938, with the war coming on and the Italian designer Schiaparelli moving in on the fashion front, Chanel retired. For the next 15 years, she shuttled between Vichy and Switzerland returning to reopen her Paris salon in 1954 only to boost lagging perfume sales. Her jersey-and-tweed suits won a cool reception from the press, but soon nearly every knockoff house was competing to turn out the closest replica. Chanel had long since refused to join the cabal designers who tried to prevent style piracy. "I am not an artist," she insisted. "I want my dresses to go out on the street." Out they went by the thousands, easy to copy, because of the straightforward design, and cheap to produce because the fabric was standard. Even a copy of a Chanel could claim its cachet. Private customers paid $700 for the original: buyers. Buyers intent on knockoffs paid close to $1.500.

In the '60s, Coco sprang no surprises, only refinements on what was her classic look: the short, straight, collarless jacket, the slightly flaring skirt and hems that never budged from knee length. Wearing the broad-brimmed Breton hat that was her hallmark, her scissors hanging from a ribbon around her neck, and her four fingers held firmly together in spite of severe arthritis, she would feel for defects. Working directly on the model, she often picked a apart with the point of her scissors, complaining that it was unwearable.

Her fashion empire at her death brought in over $160 million a year. Here clients constituted a litany of the best-dressed women, not of the year but of the century: Princess Grace, Queen Fabiola, Marlene Dietrich, Ingrid Bergman, all the Rothschilds and most of the Rockefellers. A musical version of her life, enhanced by Katharine Hepburn but stripped of most of the real drama, put Coco on Broadway. She was on a first-name basis with people too famous to need first names: Cocteau, Colette, Diaghilev, Dali, Picasso. Yet at the time of her death, the woman Picasso termed "the most sensible in the world" had a Paris wardrobe consisting of only three outfits.

"If Mademoiselle Chanel has reigned over fashion," mused Jean Cocteau some time ago, "it is not because she cut women's hair married silk and wool, put pearls on sweaters, avoided poetic labels on her perfumes, lowered the waistline or raised the waistline and obliged women to follow her directives; it is because--outside of this gracious and robust dictatorship--there is nothing in her era that she has missed."

In addition, please read "Chanel" the article at Style.com (click on Chanel). After reading the articles. Please watch the shows on the links below. There are about five shows from different seasons of Chanel. It will give you an idea of how the present design director Karl Lagerfeld designs Chanel today, but has maintained the signature characteristis of Chanel.

Question: Please identify five signature pieces, styles, fashion trends Coco Chanel made famous. Identify the times she was coming up in -- the events of the time and how they inspired her looks and some of her signature components in her garments. Why do you think some of her styles are still so prominent in most of todays wardrobes?

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/designerdirectory/CHANEL/video/.