Coco Chanel Definition presented by Apparel Search |
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Coco Chanel Chanel for Women Fashion Designers by Designer Name Designer Profiles Popular Brands |
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Gabrielle
Bonheur
Chanel
(August
19, 1883
January
10, 1971)
was a pioneering
French
couturier
whose modernist
philosophy,
menswear-inspired
fashions,
and pursuit
of expensive
simplicity
made her
arguably
the most
important
figure in
the history
of 20th-century
fashion
design.
Popularly
known as
Coco
Chanel
or
"Mademoiselle"
by her
inner
circle,
she was
born in
the
small
city of
Saumur,
France
in 1883,
although
she
asserted
she was
born in
1893, in
Auvergne.
Her
mother
died
when
Chanel
was six,
and
shortly
afterward
her
father
abandoned
her and
her four
siblings;
the
Chanel
children
were
then
placed
in the
care of
relatives
and
spent
some
time in
an
orphanage.
After a
couple
affairs
with
generous
wealthy
men - a
military
officer
and
later an
English
Industrialist
- she
was able
to open
a shop
in Paris
in 1910
selling
ladies'
hats,
and
within a
year
moved
the
business
to the
fashionable
Rue
Cambon .
Her influence
on
haute couture
was such
that she
was the
only person
in the field
to be named
on the
List of
TIME Magazine's
100 most
influential
people of
the 20th
century.
In 1922 Chanel No. 5 perfume was introduced by Chanel. Pierre Wertheimer became her partner in the perfume business in 1924. Wertheimer owned 70% of the company; Coco Chanel received 10% and her friend Bader 20%. The Wertheimers continue to control the perfume company today. The influential Chanel suit, launched in 1923, was an elegant suit comprising a knee-length skirt and trim, boxy jacket, traditionally made of woven wool with black trim and gold buttons and worn with large costume-pearl necklaces. She also popularized the little black dress, whose blank-slate versatility allowed it to be worn for day and evening, depending on how it was accessorized. Although unassuming black dresses existed before Chanel, the ones she designed were considered the haute couture standard. In 1923, she told Harper's Bazaar that "simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance." The nickname Coco was evidently acquired at La Rotonde, a cafe frequented by members of a French cavalry regiment and numerous of the great artists who flocked to Paris' Montparnasse section at the turn of the 20th century. It was there that Chanel, then a cabaret singer, performed a song called "Qui qu'a vu Coco," and the name stuck. (Other sources state that her audiences cried "Coco" when they wanted an encore, while further sources state that the song was called "Ko Ko Ri Ko," French for "Cock-a-doodle-do.") Chanel was set up in business by a lover, tienne Balsan, a French textile heir, and her love affairs with the artist Paul Iribe, the Duke of Westminster, Grand Duke Dmitri of Russia, and British sportsman Boy Capel all had a considerable influence on the stylistic evolution of her often male-inspired fashions. She never married. She almost married the Lord Westminster but declined, noting "There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel." For more than 30 years, Gabrielle Chanel made the Hotel Ritz in Paris her home, even during the Nazi occupation of Paris, during which time she was criticized for taking a German military officer as a lover. She maintained an apartment above her Rue Cambon establishment and also owned Villa La Pausa in the town of Roquebrune on the French Riviera. However, she spent her latter years in Lausanne, Switzerland and is buried there in a tomb surrounded by five stone lions. One of her common quotes is: "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road." Chanel has been portrayed on the Broadway stage by Katharine Hepburn in a musical by Andre Previn and Alan Jay Lerner, and on screen by the French actress Marie-France Pisier. The House of Chanel in Paris, under Karl Lagerfeld, remains one of the top design houses today.
Designer Definition (from U.S Department of Labor)
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