Gabrielle Chanel

coco
With a snip of her ribbon-looped scissors, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel released women from their corsets and put them in fluid jersey suits and loose chemise dresses. “Nothing is more beautiful than freedom of the body,” she said. Chanel opened up a new world for her customers, in which they could dress and play as she did—like the boys.

Cecil Beaton observed the key to Chanel’s success in his 1954 book The Glass of Fashion: “It is the genius who creates the need, though that need must reflect the unconscious wishes of the moment if that genius is to be accepted.” To the liberated legions shedding their mantles of feminine festoonery, Chanel offered wide-leg trousers, cardigan jackets, striped Breton tops, turbans, turtlenecks, peacoats, and, of course, the LBD.
Paul Poiret, an early rival, was not kind: “Poverty deluxe,” he called the youthful, pared-down look that transformed women from overblown Belle Époque belles into sleek, bobbed-hair, modern women. But recognizing her influence, Christian Dior
Read More