Coco Chanel 4 part of 5 – Her Successes
“Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself. Simplicity is the keynote of any true elegance”
Coco Chanel
COCO CHANEL: HER SUCCESS AND INNOVATIONS.
Coco Chanel, through fashion, represented the new female model that was developing in the twentieth century: a dynamic woman who worked and could no longer be a slave to the constrictive clothing of the Belle Époque.
Until that time, the designers had dressed useless, idle women, women to whom the maids had to put their sleeves. Instead, an active woman needs to feel comfortable in her dress and be able to roll up her sleeves.
The fashion designer freed women from corsets and scaffolding for hats, giving them comfortable clothes, simple lines to undertake a dynamic daily life. Chanel gave the new woman the right dress.
Many were the innovations of which Coco Chanel was the author:
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Chanel brought the length of the skirts below the knee and lowered the waist.
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In 1925, she attended the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor known as Bendor, who made her known the Scottish tweed that Coco start used in the garments she produced.
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Promoted the use of jersey, which until then was consider a fabric of little value.
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She spread the sailor style.
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Introduced the use of women’s trousers.
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Chanel creates the new woman of the twentieth century, through the transformation of men’s clothing. «Taking the male clothes and giving them a feminine style >>
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In 1926, launches a garment that is still an evergreen, “la petite robe noir”, the little black dress, inspired by the uniform of the saleswoman, was praised by the American magazine Vogue of the time, which compared it to a car. The designer Coco Chanel claimed, “True elegance cannot ignore the full possibility of free movement”. For the use of humble materials and for the inspiration that she drew from the figures related to working life, Chanel was renamed the queen of the “genre pauvre”, a very modern and snobbish “luxury poverty”: her rival, the stylist Paul Poiret, called the style of Coco Chanel << misérbailisme deluxe >>
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In 1927, introduces the garçonne style, Coco Chanel spreads the fashion of short hair, a feminine look ideal for the dynamic, working woman. It seems she was force to cut her hair after accidentally burning it on a stove. Shortly after, the young women of the time imitated his cut. A real revolution, Coco proposes a masculine style and no one else had dared so much before.
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In 1928, he expanded his shop in Rue de Cambon, taking it to number 31 and creating a three-story boutique.
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In 1929, after the collapse of Wall Street, Chanel, who suffered from the Depression, left for Hollywood, for an engagement as a costume designer. She return to Paris after two years.
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In 1934, she offer her customers real jewelery.
The maison Chanel had 20,000 employees, 34 perfumeries and produced 28,000 models a year.
Word of mouth…Scilla
to be continue…
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