Discovering The Life Behind The Brand of Coco Chanel | Absolute Documentaries

foreign was very much a modern woman those sort of Demands she placed on clouds and the sort of solution she came up with were things that were suggested to her by her life as a modern woman they were really clothes for living in they weren't clothes to be ostentatious displays of wealth there were clothes for getting on with business it was Chanel who really did as Mary Quant said bring about a modern way of dressing her whole philosophy was that things should be worn in a very casual Nosh long way she wanted women to feel comfortable but look elegant indisputably of any 20th century designer she had the most long lasting inference and she was the most original oh Gabrielle Chanel was born in 1883 in sumo in northern France the thing about Gabrielle Coco was that she elaborated so much of her life and she obfuscated other bit so it's hard to tell exactly what happened but I think we're pretty clear that it was not an easy childhood when she was only six her mother died and her father placed her in an orphanage a Convent orphanage she lived there until she was 18 when she was too old to stay with them any longer and then she was cast out on the streets but it should be pointed out that while Chanel was at the orphanage the nuns taught her how to sew and that will prove pivotal so she left there and went to work as a semstress but but at night as a sort of sideline job she was performing in Cabaret she was one of the posers she actually at one point wanted to be a performer because that was the route for a poor girl to actually make some money but it wasn't very successful it was there in Cabaret that she got her famous nickname she'd been christened Gabrielle Gabrielle boner but she became Coco and that may have been for a famous song that she used to sing kokoriko or it may have been short for cocot which of course means both flirt and less kindly kept woman because from this time on the wealthy men around her would be a very important feature of Chanel's life while she was working in Cabaret Coco Chanel met the textile air Etienne Bolsa and it was he who first offered to back her in the millinery business she actually went to live with him in his Chateau for a period of time and when she turned to millinery as a relief from the kind of boredom she experienced when he would he would leave her to go in different military campaigns but then she also spanned that out into a business she then met a friend end of his an even richer friend Arthur or boy as he's usually known Chappelle and who was an anglo-french Polo playing rich man who volunteered to actually set her up with an establishment of her own she now was a very quick study and he opened up even more of a sophisticated world to her and she absorbed it all and together they were quite the power couple to boy's credit it wasn't only financial backing he gave her some of the things he loved his his whiskey hip flask even would influence the design of the first perfume bottle and his whole that whole sports playing gentlemanly look was very influential for Chanel's first designs I think it is important to say that that Chanel was incredibly single-minded she was incredibly willful and she was very ambitious for her having sewing skills and seeing fashion as a career that women could could um succeed in without the interference of men she saw that as kind of her take it to Freedom with capell's support she launched her own business in Paris she actually shared the shop with an existing Couture establishment so she wasn't selling clothes she was only selling hats but she sold hats to high-ranking members of French society including a woman called Gabrielle dozenay who wore a Chanel hat in 1912. theater production of Bellamy and that garnered extreme attention for her across Paris she then opened her shops in Deauville and in beeritz the seaside resorts [Music] it was here that Chanel moved into making clothes as well as hats proved to have a great influence on on Chanel's early style because she she Incorporated sort of Sailor Stripes famously the Breton t-shirt that just worked it was initially a signature piece for Chanel but it's become a classic throughout the world uh she also took the um Fisherman's Jersey which had been considered a very poor it's a functional cloth before and she made dresses out of it slouchy jackets she once said that it started when because dobial is a little chilly she pulled on an old jersey shirt and realized its possibilities at that time it was Jersey was perceived as a fabric that was used only for men's underwear but Chanel felt that it could be applied to women's dress and specifically that it could be applied to kind of modernizing women's dress it sounds incredibly simple but really it was revolutionary because not only was it about clothes that were free clothes that were easy to wear clothes that weren't restrictive it was also about taking something that was really EV every day and elevating it to luxury very very quickly she was able even to pay boy back with the money that she was making talking from these new utterly revolutionary designs Chanel actually established herself as a couturier in 1918. that was when she founded the house as Maison Chanel at 31 Ruka Mall in subsequent years she would take over the buildings on either side of that to expand her ever-growing Empire and the salon there at Hindu combo is still very much the way it was in her day with its golden beige carpets and it's mirrored staircase where Mademoiselle would sit sort of out of sight of the audience and watch the shows really what Chanel's clothes epitomized after their first world war was a new way of dressing and a new kind of femininity it wasn't about corsets it wasn't about layers of clothing it wasn't about kind of a cumbersome silhouette it was about simplicity so there were all these movements happening in the start of the 20th century you know there was the start of abstract art cubism there was what Chanel was doing and it all came together after the after the first world war because women just did not want to dress in the old way anymore that was something that had begun um to emerging women's clothing during the war when women suddenly had to move much more and undertake different tasks than they'd have ever had to do before women had to work when women emerged from the war they didn't want to give that up and really what Chanel offered was a new wardrobe for a new type of woman [Music] today it feels like a lot of the symbols of her look are really Eternal and it's really difficult I think to perceive how shocking they were at the time this the whole idea of wearing fake jewelry she know what ostentatious fake jewelry was really about inverting ideas of luxury challenging Notions of preciousness and things that have been kind of cemented since the Middle Ages Chanel was ripping them apart and was proposing something modern modern Alternatives modern views of luxury and it was all tied up with ideas of practicality ideas of Freedom Chanel said if there's a button there must be a buttonhole that goes with it if it's a pocket you should be able to put your hand in it when Chanel was fitting designs onto her models she used to make them bend over stand up sit down get up as if they were getting up up the steps of a bus just to be sure that the designs actually worked for everyday living and I think that's why women absolutely fell on them she herself said that what she wanted was to make design designs where a woman could breathe eat drink without actually fainting Chanel met the Duke of Westminster aboard his yacht in Monte Carlo in 1923 and the two started a decade-long relationship once again one of her lovers Al a something important wonderful British Tweeds and the colors that came with them and of course Tweeds in all their variety of color and texture are still enormously important for the house of Chanel today out of the repeated legends that Blossom around Chanel one remains that she took the the Double C logo that came to emblemize her fashion house from the lamp house around Westminster she she also started to design sporty clothes you know tennis clothes equestrian clothes I mean she that was that was something she got from The Duke of Westminster she loved uh British equestrian clothes because of course they were very tailored the Kushner was very intelligent she she was also a major cultural figure at that time and she she cultivated something of a you know a salon you know she's very friendly with cocktail Picasso she did costumes for ballet ruse and she designed the the costumes for this stage adaptation of the persons she she was a cultivated woman there was very much this idea that she was plugged into an art scene and and not only that she was a bystander and not only that she was part of Cafe Society but she was an active participant I think that's an interesting to make 50 watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription or fire foreign was admired and worn by numerous celebrities including Grace Kelly Princess Caroline and Elizabeth Taylor [Music] she now had many signatures so you'd wear your poor Fisherman's jersey with you know a diamond ring but also why not Chuck on a fake pearl necklace as well and make it a really big long necklace that you twist around your neck lots of times because that looks much more fabulous than some polite little real pearl necklace you know if you if you haven't got it you can still flaunt it but you get fakes good fakes of course some of her iconic garments from those early years were the striped sailor shirt and then of course the famous Chanel suit you could wear your suit and you could go right through from the day through into the evening by the 30s she'd done this little black dress and that was revolutionary because prior to that flat was definitely the color of morning you did not wear it Vogue called it the Ford the equivalent of Henry Ford's Motorcar they wrote that 10 out of 10 women had one 10 out of 10 women wanted one and that this really would be the dress of the future if you like and they were right Chanel said that she didn't need to use other colors because black had it all and I really think for Chanel this idea of of black ties in with these Notions of practicality with these Notions of modernity and also with an idea of shocking people the idea of dressing somebody in Black in the 1920s was a shocking notion the co-respondence shoe we can't forget that that was based on men's shoes that you know the the beigey shoe with the little black tip Chanel knew that new true major which your leg looked longer but she wanted to make it really smart give it a bit of punch so she put the black tips on it of course the other thing that she invented was the 2.5 bag name because it was invented in February 1955. what a brilliant bag I mean it's something that women still aspire to and it's the same design I think really when you think about Chanel's style it's this whole idea of form following function ornament being crime all these different ideas are coming together it's the ideas that are influencing across the entirety of European culture but in fashion they're best represented by Chanel in 1924 Chanel took a bold step with the creation of parfum Chanel what existed previously um the Couture Paul poire had founded Papa Rosine um but he'd never lent his name to a perfume in 1924 Chanel founded Papa Chanel and launched her first fragrance which was called Chanel Number Five she was very superstitious Chanel so um number five was her lucky number she chose the mix of the perfumes herself with her with her nose it was a it was you know it has Jasmine in it amongst other lots of different notes in it Rose all the things that she personally loved this was not a designer going and picking something off the shelf and saying that'll do we'll do another one in 15 months time this was a perfume that she wore it was the perfume that she wore the bottle itself was based Chanel said on a variety of different themes on the one hand the stopper was supposedly based on the shape of the plasma Dom was also inspired by the gentleman's toilet sets of her different suitors as well as by the kind of chemical bottles that she would see at work in the laboratory when they were actually mixing the potion and of course Chanel Number Five would get what's possibly the most famous unsolicited celebrity endorsement of all time when Marilyn Monroe was asked in an interview what she wore in bed and said five drops of Chanel Number Five of course the second world war cut an absolute swathe across the Paris fashion industry how not and every designer had to make their own response but Coco Chanel's response would cause a great deal of controversy she became romantically involved with a leading German Gunter Von dinklager and it was he who enabled her still to go on living in her apartment in Paris in The Roots she actually denounced the the owners of parfaction now the weather Myers as Jews and tries to get control of the company that really was her undoing because they were very very tough on collaborators or should I say collaborate trees because of course it was the women who wore the brunt of it you know they would feather and tar the heads of women who who had had affairs and and Chanel was very lucky to escape that I mean she escaped that because she she did Escape she went to live in Switzerland there is one theory in one of the many books written about her that she was sort of spying for for Churchill because through the Duke of Westminster she had met church and not just met him but she had become friendly with him there is this theory that Chanel was an incredibly useful and effective spy I do not know if there is any Merit in this Theory who knows a known collaboration with the Nazis did profoundly affect her reputation after the war the French never quite forgave Chanel for really quite some time she tried to play it down herself as the Americans liberated Paris Chanel ordered her staff to give out free Chanel Number Five perfume to the American GIS so they could take a little glamor home and that made her very popular with the Americans who were around then but the French were a lot slower to forgive her Chanel was actually um brought back into fashion because sounds of Chanel Number Five had gone on the way um so the owners of of paraphernal approached her with a deal which was that they would cover her living expenses whatever they were for the rest of her life if she would come back and start to make fashion collections again Chanel presented her comeback collection for spring 1954 and although the collection was well received particularly by the American press the French were aghast um they felt that she now was out of touch with the times Chanel herself said that she wanted to make an answer to the ludicrousness of dior's upholstered as she called them clothes and that that in a sense is why she'd come back out of retirement she launched at that point the cardigan suits which replaced the structure of tailoring like dior's with soft quilting to hold layers of Tweed against layers of silk the base of the jacket was weighted with a chain to allow it to hang straight and that really influenced women's fashion across all different levels it became the way that women dressed women of a certain age and a certain class for the next 50 years Coco Chanel died on January the 10th 1971. so Chanel died in 1971. so she had gone from the Victorian era into the modern era I think the legacy of Coco Chanel is enormous we almost can't calculate her importance because effectively we are all still wearing Chanel designs today the the stripy t-shirts the little black dress just as popular now if not more so that the suit the slouchy cardigan jacket clothes that you can move in work in clothes that just don't constrain the body for me she is the 20th century designer because we really are still wearing so much of what she did now after Chanel's death in 1971 the house of Chanel ticked along for some years but what really revolutionized it was in 1983 when Carl Lagerfeld came to the helm when log fell was brought into Chanel the whole idea was for him to energize Chanel Chanel has been said at that point to have been like Tutankhamun's tomb not meaning kind of a place of of undiscovered Treasures but something that was really dusty and really old and what lurgerfeld did in 83 was to start to to dust It Off and to reignite Chanel's Legacy to reanimate Chanel it was about how do you make this moribund thing fashionable how do you make people forget their grandmother wearing a Chanel suit and want to wear one themselves and that's really was the challenge that was placed with Lagerfeld what he very cleverly did was identify what they now call a codes but other signature pieces you know the little black dress the suit the the Tweeds the the correspondent shoes and he has reworked them endlessly for the last 40 years and you know often made them ridiculous deliberately it was really about um an irreverence but what Lagerfeld did at Chanel was set the blueprint for designer house revivals which is still with us today Carl Lagerfeld really has taken the house of Chanel onwards and upwards and outwards and made it a real commercial Powerhouse I mean I think the the interesting thing with Chanel is that in this world of fashion that's incredibly open and Incredibly boastful about its Financial figures and about how well everything's doing and about how well everything's selling Chanel's privately owned and Chanel is the one that no one really knows anything about no one knows how well Chanel is doing the only thing we know is that Chanel is able to Stage these kind of spectacular events we know that Chanel is able to make these kind of incredible clothes [Music] I think of all the labels Chanel somehow has never has never lost its sort of classiness and I think that's a combination of very clever business maneuvering and marketing from the virt timers but it I think it's also got to do with the aura of Coco Chanel she's just this incredible woman she is the most powerful weapon that that Chanel has well there's no way she never ever die it can't she knows the it's the most famous house in fashion it's always going to survive although the flash May weather the name will still prevail the Chanel name will always continue because Chanel is actually more than fashion Shields style there's something Eternal about it we'll always continue [Music] thank you

Channel: Absolute Documentaries

Views: 25,433

Keywords: Absolute Documentaries, Designer sunglasses, Famous designer, Fashion innovation icon, Grand couturier, Iconic couture, Independent woman, Style icon Coco Chanel, Timeless classics, Trendsetting designer, avant-garde fashion, chanel handbags, chic designs, couture fashion, designer lifestyle, empowerment through fashion, groundbreaking fashion, high-end fashion, luxury fashion, modern femininity, women's empowerment

Id: vLR5lHWDn7Q

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2023