Remembering CoCo Chanel on Her Birthday!…Her Life.
Hello my stylish readers, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I haven’t stayed away from you for this long before so it feels like forever! you see, I made a trip to see my family over in Ekiti state here in Nigeria and it was just a time to relax and rest and let some one else worry about taking care of the boys… like I said, I had a good rest 🙂
Wouldn’t it be nice for us to begin this week on our blog talking about and celebrating in my opinion, the most influential fashion designer, first lady and dame of fashion, Gabrielle Bonheur ‘Coco’ Chanel. Mademoiselle Chanel imparted to us her thoughts on fashion versus style, work, men and destiny in unique unforgettable ways that still make us smile and nod and sometimes giggle whether we agree with her or not!
Í don’t do Fashion, I am Fashion’- Coco Chanel
‘Fashion Fades… only style remains the same’- Chanel
‘I don’t care what you think about me, I don’t think about you at all!” Chanel
Chanel was a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Born August 19, 1883, in Samur, France, she was raised in an orphanage after her mother’s death when she was 6 years old and her father who was a only a peddler with 5 children to fend for, put her in the care of the orphanage.She was taught to sew while she was still young by the nuns who raised her and this skill would later aid in her life’s work as a fashion designer. She began her career as a singer in clubs and cafes (1905-1908)and that was really where she got the name Coco from as she was quoted to have said that it was a “shortened version of cocotte, the French word for ‘kept woman,” according to an article in The Atlantic.
‘Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity’ – Chanel
Around the age of 20, Chanel became involved with Etienne Balsan who offered to help her start a millinery business in Paris. She soon left him for one of his even wealthier friends, Arthur “Boy” Capel who she dated for 9 years even after Capel got married! pretty daring woman I must say! Both men were instrumental in Chanel’s first fashion venture. She opened her first shop on Paris’s 31 Rue Cambon in 1910 (which remains the brand’s head quarters till this day), selling hats and later added two more stores in Deauville and Biarritz, Most of her most timeless designs came from trying to make more comfortable outfits that were both stylish and comfortable as she would always say, “luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”
‘The best things in life are free, the second best are very expensive’- Chanel
Her first taste of clothing success came from a dress she designed out of an old jersey on a chilly day(below). Several people asked about where she got the dress, so she offered to make one for them. “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville,” she once told author Paul Morand.
‘In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different’ – Chanel
In the 1920s she introduced us to functional and timeless fashion with her box-cut bouclé jackets, Breton T-shirts, pyjama styles, camellia brooches she helped women say good-bye to the days of corsets and other confining garments.
‘Simplicity is the key-note of all true elegance’- Chanel
‘The most courageous act is to think for yourself aloud’-Chanel
Coco in Breton Stripes
‘Everyday is a fashion show and the world is its runway!’- Chanel
Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and the remember the woman’ – Chanel
‘Fashion is architecture, it is a matter of proportions’ – Chanel
‘”‘Where should one use perfume?’ a young woman asked. ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed,’ I said.” – Chanel
First sketch of the little black dress (LBD)
The Little Black Dress
‘A woman is as old as she deserves’ – Chanel
‘You can be courageous at thirty, charming at forty and irresistible for the rest of your life’- Chanel
She however ended this self-imposed exile in 1954, returning to Paris at the age of 70 where she took on Christian Dior’s overtly feminine New Look. She expanded the signature style with the introduction of pea jackets and bell-bottoms for women. Her new collection, panned by the press in Europe, was a hit in the United States.
‘”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
Hollywood stars including Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly fell in love with her effortlessly stylish boxy cardigan suits and bell bottoms.
Modern Chanel bell bottoms inspired by sailors
During her life, Coco Chanel also designed costumes for the stage, including Cocteau’s ‘Antigone’ (1923) and ‘Oedipus Rex’ (1937) and cinematic works such as ‘La Regle de Jeu’.
A Broadway musical of her life opened in 1969, with Katharine Hepburn taking the role of Chanel.
Coco Chanel worked until her death in January 10, 1971 at the age of 88, spending her last moments in the style she had become accustomed to at her opulent private apartment in The Ritz, Paris.
Chanel in her Ritz Apartment
‘As long as you know men are like children, you know everything’- Chanel
” Let my legend make its way in life, I wish it a long one’ – Chanel
”Fashion passes, style remains.” – Chanel
Karl Lagerfeld has been chief designer of Chanel’s fashion house since 1982. His ability to continuously mine the Chanel archive for inspiration testifies to the importance of Coco Chanel’s contribution to the world of fashion.
In the recent television biopic, Coco Chanel (2008), Shirley MacLaine starred as the famous designer around the time of her 1954 career resurrection. The actress told WWD that she had long been interested in playing Chanel. “What’s wonderful about her is she’s not a straightforward, easy woman to understand.”
“Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.”- Chanel
Painting of Chanel- Marion Vogue
Old Style by Molekor Old 