The MoJo Guide to Coco Chanel
by
Joe Pélissier & Christine Padmore
Why bluff when you can know your MoJo!
Copywright@2011 Joe Pélissier and Christine Padmore
The MoJo Guides are the trading name of Universal Art Studios Ltd.
Company No. 7539304
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The MoJo Guide to Coco Chanel
1.
In a nutshell, who’s Coco Chanel?
2.
Why is she famous?
3.
What was her background?
4.
Her designs
5.
Meet the woman
6.
Show me the money!
7.
Loves and lovers
8.
Ashes to ashes and the Chanel legacy
1. In a nutshell, who’s Coco Chanel?
Died: 8 April 1971, aged 87
Coco Chanel was arguably the most influential fashion designer of the 20th Century. A designer whose style and way of thinking influences contemporary fashion designers as diverse as Tom Ford, Miuccia Prada and Donatella Versace.
Chanel. The word alone conjures up a mysterious sense of simplicity and sophistication. Beautiful women wearing an exquisitely tailored ‘Chanel’ suit, the legendary perfume Chanel No.5 and the ultimate of brand insignias, two interlocking Cs. Hidden luxury with a minimal sense of ostentation.
For Chanel, "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind…”
Chanel was the orphaned peasant girl who revitalized women’s’ fashion - not once but twice: in the 1920s and then the ‘50s. And each time, she liberated design by taking other styles, fabrics and articles of clothing and fashioning them to suit her unique vision. The clothes she created changed the way women looked and how they looked at themselves.
How cool is that? We owe her masses.
Because she couldn’t afford the fashionable clothes of the period she taught herself to work in fashion with the creative mindset of a painter, musician or poet. The result is one of the most powerful and influential fashion brands in the world – The House of Chanel, led today by the designer, Karl Lagerfeld.
How did Gabriel Bonheur Chanel migrate from poverty to international super stardom? How do you become known simply by a nickname, ‘Coco’. And why is the word Chanel now a byword that exudes sophistication and allure?
Let this MoJo guide tell you why Coco Chanel was shrewd, chic and cutting edge. Together we will peer behind the smoke and mirrors of this extraordinary woman and her creative ruthlessness.
When you next dab a little No.5 behind your ears and step out in your ‘little black dress’, it will be with a new sense of knowing, and maybe, admiration
2. Why’s she famous?
Chanel is famous for three reasons.
Firstly, as a talented fashion designer who had a genius for going against the fashion of her day and creating designs that liberated women’s figures and which they found more preferable and desirable. Secondly, as the name behind the best selling perfume in the world. And finally, as the entrepreneurial founder of an iconic brand, synonymous with elegance and sophistication.
Chanel the designer
Chanel started her career as a milliner – making and designing hats. It was a skill she had learnt at her childhood convent and on which her initial reputation was built. But her real skill as a designer was her ability to create designs from restricted financial means and which were brilliantly in tune with the age in which she lived.
In 1913 there were no fashions or clothing for sport, so Chanel created a wardrobe for outdoor living - trim little boaters, jackets, jumpers and ‘the sailor blouse’. And in the 20s, a time when women’s clothing still consisted of corsetry, long and weighty skirts and demanding high heels, Coco offered them a more relaxed and androgynous alternative – trousers. A freedom that only the truly rich could afford, but the breaking of a taboo nonetheless.
She was a genius at taking a simple design concept and then matching it to the desire for change among the clientele she served.
“A world was dying, while another was being born. I was there, and the opportunity came forward, and I took it.”
Chanel the parfumier
Strictly speaking, Coco wasn’t a parfumier, but exquisite scents and smells are indelibly linked to her name. It’s not her designs that gave her immortality but a precious liquid gold — Chanel No. 5. It was launched in 1921 in a beautiful Art Deco bottle that bore her name.
Mojoid: Ernest Beaux, her perfumier, proposed 5 different formulas – Coco chose the last, hence the name. She also considered it her lucky number and so her collections were presented on the fifth day, of the fifth month.