Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (19 August 1883 — 10 January 1971), commonly known as ‘Coco’ was a revolutionary French fashion designer of the ‘poor chic’ look who, contrary to many elite fashion designers of the era, was very much aware of the economy surrounding her clients, and designed using materials accordingly. Chanel’s designs were a complete and drastic change from what the French public was used to, and used unconventional fabrics, patterns and draping methods.
Early Life
Coco, a nickname acquired while experimenting in a singing career during her teenage years, spent her younger years at an orphanage in her town of Aubazine run by Sisters of the Congregations of the Sacred Heart of Mary. It was there that she developed a great friendship with her aunt, Adrienne Chanel, who also resided at the orphanage, and later began working together in a small shop that specialized in the sales of trousseaux and layettes. Concurrently Coco did some sewing for the Sisters of the orphanage and created dresses for some of the ladies of Moulins. In order to really begin her dream of designing, Chanel was in need of financial assistance. This was found in her meeting with Lieutenant Balsan, who gave her the financial wherewithal to buy fashionable dress to which Adrienne and she added hats of her own design. This catapulted Chanel's design career, and It was here that the life of leisure and luxury that Chanel became quite accustomed too began to fold out in front of her.
Business
From Arthur Capel, a love interest, Chanel received an advance check to open her boutique on Rue Cambon, a street that would be associated with her name for the next eighty years. Among her first clients were members of royalty, which soon expanded to society women and women in general. Chanel’s increased number of patrons encouraged her to increase her field. Chanel added knitted shirts influenced by men’s polo shirts, as well as blazers and sweaters.
With further financial help from Capel in the summer of 1913, Coco opened her second boutique in Deauville on rue Gonant-Biron. Her shop was in an ideal place on the sunny-side of the street, with “Chanel” displayed proudly in large black letters, her first experimentation with the logo that remains at present. What Chanel produced that summer was a reaction against the standard female wear of the time, sports clothing. Her instinct told her that to pare down to function and logic was to rejuvenate.
Chanel’s first originals were loose, informal clothing requiring no corset, uncommon of the period. Her choice of knits and flannels, fabrics more readily associated with English schoolboys and sporting events than ladies fashions, would be remarked upon as evidence to her effortless elegance.
As Chanel’s notoriety quickly grew, her designs escalated and encompassed many different articles of clothing for many different standards of living. Chanel added loose, casual sports clothes to her repertoire, frequently made out of tricot, a popular fabric she worked with. Tricot is a relatively cheap and easy product to work with and manufacture, and can be applied using many different color and material combinations.
Much to the dismay of her family members, on July 15, 1915 Chanel opened her first fashion house in Paris.
As an innovator in textiles, Chanel introduced jersey (fabric) as a fashionable fabric, which to do this she took a humble material and immediately turned it into a fashionable fabric. Chanel also accelerated the growth of the ready-to-wear industry, for it was a fabric within the financial reach of the majority of women who wanted to dress aligned with the current trends, but financially were not well off and thus were unable to previously.
Chanel excelled at fabrics, their interpretation, and an ability to use them. That she could handle materials was also attested early on when she worked directly on her models, most typically her cousin and early business partner, Adrienne. As her fame grew rapidly so did her staff, which grew to seven hundred by early 1916.
Chanel Formula
Chanel is credited for giving haute couture an easy way of dressing, described as classic chic yet still casual. Her most famous pieces in the creation of this style were her trademark two-piece sweater and skirt, trousers, jackets and shirts, frocks, the little black dress. Accessories include two-toned shoes, beige with black toecaps, quilted handbags with gold chains, scarves, a variety of hats, black bows and white gardenias for the hair and distinctive costume jewelry. Chanel was quick to describe her empire as a style, not a fashion. Chanel had created a new spirit of independence and evolved a style of dress for the modern and liberated woman, by building a standard which appealed to every taste, as well as being the first to democratize the art of dressmaking for purely economic reasons, simplicity and formality was of upmost importance.
Chanel was very in tune and responsive to the French people, and was often realistic in her products and business. Chanel managed to start and respond to trends simultaneously and managed to raise her popularity dramatically yearly.
The early 1920s is considered to be what is referred to as the “Russian years,” as many of her costumes were covered in brightly colored embroidered fabric. The contemporary Russian Constructivist movement in painting and textiles was also employed in her design, a movement referencing the traditional Russian arts and crafts.
The 1930s marked an era crazed for fur, and Chanel put her instinctive flair for embroidery to use incorporating this trend wherever she see fit. Also popularized in the 1930s was the use of sequins, both as embroidery and full on patterning. As the 30s progressed, Chanel got much more adventurous and creative with her sequin use, designing both a black evening coat with detailing of wide, straight sleeves, color wide reveres and padding throughout and a cape of black satin embroidered with black sequins’ arranged in a fish-scale pattern, also referencing a favored motif of the Surrealists.
Response to the Public Conditions
The war had changed everything for women in France. Young women were employed in rough working conditions, and the fashion in clothes changed to suit the current wartime living. Chanel was able to make do, by determining what was handy to work with and what was available. Not only did Chanel respond to females needs by creating clothing more practical for their living style, but economically she made her line more accessible as well. Chanel compared her style to a simple Ford car, in saying that “simplicity doesn’t mean poverty,” expressing the view of Henry Ford of the Fordism realm of thinking, that simplicity can be just as beautiful and artistic as complex designs.
Chanel’s expressed view was to make her fashions filter to wide-ranging groups of women, and was the first fashion designer to do so. In 1930 Chanel went back to her staple foundations of designing garments, and by 1932 her product prices had been cut in half to accommodate a larger group of public customers.
When the recession hit Europe, it affected the luxury trade first, and hard. The women who were still wealthy wore plain dresses, furless wool coats, sweaters and slacks. Economical fabrics, which were also easy to maintain, were popular, and in 1931 Chanel was invited to London to help promote cotton as a fashionable fabric. In another manner to keep costs down, Chanel incorporated the use of zippers.
Artistic inspiration on work
Throughout Chanel’s entire life she was completely devoted to the arts. Her frequent traveling led her to explore new cultures and boundaries. Her expanding horizons had an obvious effect on her clothing designs, as she started to incorporate pieces of foreign art and different artistic movements into her work.
Without even realizing it, Chanel echoed the stance of great writers of modernity by taking men and equaling them, by simply being better than they were. The involvement of many women in the war effort of 1914-1918 had given them the experience of work and independence itself and they wanted their clothes to suggest their new emancipation.
Chanel’s combination of pure lines and plain colors often drew comparisons with the contemporary art movement, Cubism, with particular reference to the Analytic phase which ennobled humble materials and muted colors. She also dramatically shortened hem lines, which had an effect on hairstyles for only the very short bobbed style suited Chanel’s jersey suits.
Chanel’s adaptation of the forms and details of masculine dress are often considered in relation to dandyism, in particular to that archetypal dandy, George Brummell. The beginning of dandyism in France coincided with the French Revolution, and was considered a political statement of dressing in an aristocratic style in order to distinguish status. Chanel employed rich detailing and delicate textures to create this sensation.
Throughout her entire career many of her creations evoked the spirit of Art Deco, with its very classic strand emphasizing purity of line as well as its sumptuous use of surface decoration.
In her later work the Surrealist movement was very much seen in her work. Chanel became more outlandish and creative with her designs, specifically with her reference of marine and aquatic life with her shell hat, and the use of the fish-scale pattern. With the verve and vivacity she continued to sustain this theme in her fashions well beyond the prime of Surrealism. In her personal life, Chanel became close friends with both Dali and Cocteau, leaders of the surrealist movement, often collaborating with them on costume designs for ballets and theatrical plays.
Revival of Empire
Despite great triumphs, Chanel closed her fashion house in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Only her boutique devoted to accessories and perfumes were able to remain open in the difficult times.
Chanel’s passion for designing such astonishing works of art was not yet dead, and had an extraordinary comeback in 1954, at the age of 71. To spur her comeback, she was aware that the great male fashion designers of the day were elitist with designs, that were intricate and complicated as well as out of touch with the social and economic changes of women who were out working with not much idle time on their hands. Chanel complained that male designers of the time couldn’t possibly have the best interests of a woman in mind, when his look made them look grand and stately. Chanel prided herself on being so in touch with the emotions of her clients, and to see the fashion world change as it did, sparked a fire to get back into the business.
In response, Chanel re-launched the hallmark of her style, the classic Chanel suit, which met fevered responses internationally, especially in America. The beginning years of the 1950s worked with clean-cut lines and a relaxed, comfortable and natural silhouette. Despite the 15-year gap within her career, her clothing was still considered fashionable, as they were updated but not departed from the sartorial principles she had devised when she began the business. It is the simple line and excellent craftsmanship that makes them so modern. Slight differentiations were composed however, as suits came out with an incredible sense of color, an oriental influence was felt, which she only briefly flirted with early in her career.
Chanel Today
By the time Chanel had died, the fashion house was the most powerful and influential fashion house in Paris. It was a unique fate for a fashion label that demonstrated such remarkable flexibility and an instinct for adapting its fixed aesthetic principles to changing tastes and economic terms.
In 1983 Karl Lagerfeld was appointed the design director for both haute couture and ready-to-wear clothing for the design house Chanel. Although much of the attention paid to the economic time of the period has disappeared, Lagerfeld has stayed in touch with many of the design aesthetics of Coco Chanel, such as her penchant for simple black clothing and beautiful detail work.
References
Mackrell, Alice. Coco Chanel. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992.
Madison, Axel. Chanel: a woman of her own. New York City: Henry Hold and Company, 1990.
http://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/chanel.html
Baudot, Francois. Fashion The Twentieth Century. New York: Universe, 2006.