Coco Chanel. Pioneer of a modern image of women?

Pre-University Paper , 2014 , 34 Pages , Grade: 15 points

Art - History of Art

The question of this subject paper in the seminar subject "Art and Culture in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties" is "Coco Chanel - Pioneer of a Modern Image of Women?". During the research for my previous paper with the topic "The change of the image of women from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism" [I] developed an interest in the question to what extent Chanel has influenced our fashion today and consequently also the current image of women. (...)

Basically, my research will aim at discussing the question to what extent and by what means Chanel has contributed to the development of the modern image of women. Since Coco Chanel was first and foremost a fashion designer, her influence will presumably also be seen on the fashion level in particular, so that I will try to set the focus of the work there. I will probably build up my elaboration roughly as follows: First, I will explain the image of women at the time before Chanel's influence, whereby I will present the social role of women at that time as well as women's fashion, in order to enable a comparison and to make clear Chanel's presumably divergent view. This is followed by a brief overview of Chanel's life and her particular lifestyle, which is followed by a presentation of her fashion creations.

Finally, in order to answer the question of Chanel's influence on a modern image of women, I will examine what in today's (fashion) everyday life is still reminiscent of her work at that time. Finally, I will draw a conclusion and thus answer the previous problem.

Table of contents

1) Introduction

2) The woman before the influence of Coco Chanel
2.1) The image of women
2.2) Women's fashion

3) About Coco Chanel
3.1) Short biography
3.2) Lifestyle
3.3) View of fashion at that time
3.4) Creation of own fashion
3.4.1) Motivations
3.4.2) Ascent

4) Coco Chanel’s influence
4.1) Fashion
4.1.1) Style
4.1.2) The Little Black
4.1.3) The Chanel Costume
4.1.4) Other fashion
4.2) Image of women/female way of life
4.3) Today

5) Conclusion

List of references

Appendix

1) Introduction

The question of this thesis in the seminar subject "Art and Culture in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties" is "Coco Chanel - Pioneer of a modern image of women?". During the research on my previous lecture with the topic "The change of the image of women from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism", I came across the name Coco Chanel a few times, which was already familiar to me through the fashion label and above all through the perfume "Chanel No. 5". As part of this research, I also read about the "Little Black", a fashion classic that is still relevant today, and developed an interest in the question of the extent to which Chanel has influenced our current fashion and, as a result, the current image of women. So I finally decided to choose this as the topic of my thesis.

Basically, my elaboration will be aimed at discussing the question of to what extent and by what means Chanel has contributed to the development of the modern image of women. Since Coco Chanel was primarily a fashion designer, her influence will probably also be particularly noticeable on the fashion level, so I will try to focus the work there. I will probably build up my elaboration roughly as follows: First of all, I will explain the image of women at the time before Chanel's influence, whereby I will present the social role of women at that time as well as women's fashion, in order to enable a comparison and to make clear the presumably divergent view of Chanel. This is followed by a brief overview of Chanel's life and her special lifestyle, followed by a presentation of the fashion creations. Finally, in order to be able to answer the question of Chanel's influence with regard to a modern image of women, I will examine what still reminds of her work at that time in today's (fashion) everyday life. Finally, I will draw a conclusion and thus answer the previous problem.

2) The woman before the influence of Coco Chanel

2.1) The image of women

The time of the turn of the century, especially the 19th century, before Coco Chanel's career could be guessed, was characterized by a clearly differentiated distribution of roles between man and woman. The man, as head of the family, was credited with qualities such as strength, intelligence, efficiency and willpower, while the woman was credited with weakness, modesty and patience. She was considered a compliant and unconditionally loyal, caring mother and housewife, who was clearly subordinate to the man. The responsibilities and almost the entire life of the woman were limited to the house and the family. Unlike men, women were not given any say, either in political or social affairs.tlichen, still in ecclesiastical affairs. Although women were allowed to attend school, there were gender differences here, so that the girls were mainly to be prepared for their later role and were taught in subjects such as "female handicrafts". Women were completely forbidden to study, but there were differences between social classes in terms of professional activity. Thus, women's work in the richer class, which lived mainly in the city, was strongly rejected. In the village and thus mostly in the poorer class, on the other hand, the women were often forced to work, since the father of the family's salary was not sufficient to feed the entire family. However, the women did not pursue their own, self-chosen profession, but helped family members in agricultural and craft businesses. What all strata had in common was that the woman could hardly live as an individual personality and was forced to put her own wishes and needs in the background.¹

2.2) Women's fashion

Through fashion, women in the period around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the so-called "Belle Époque", tried to make their prosperity and high social status clear in comparison to the low-ranking working class.² Characteristic of women's fashion were floor-length skirts and dresses with a stiff, raised collar as well as a waist pressed together by the tight corset (see Annex 1.1) ³ ? The shape of the skirt varied over time and became narrower until it was so tight around 1910 that only the smallest steps were possible.⁴ At the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called Sans-Ventre line won (see Annex 1.11) of popularity, a body shape achieved by a very tight corset, characterized by the concealed belly, the constantly slightly bent forward posture and the pushed backtE.⁵ Under the underskirt (see Annex 1.111) the women had to wear several layers of skirts and thus a mass of underwear, which was usually made of stiff, uncomfortable materials. As accessories, gloves, lush gold jewelry and particularly striking, oversized hats were (see Annex 1.1V) which were decorated to a large extent with tulle veils, feathers, ribbons and flowers.3 In addition, noble walking sticks with handles made of gold or silver as well as many decorations and unusual umbrellas as well as furs were among the fashionable accessories. Very popular was the noble pallor, so that often even with liquid bleach was helped. In order to make the skin look delicate and transparent, the ves on the décolleté were traced with watercolors.⁶ Beauty and elegance at the time described were mostly measured by the abundance of fabrics and the lushness of the jewelry.

3) About Coco Chanel

3.1) Short biography

As the second illegitimate daughter of the street vendor Albert Chanel, Coco Chanel, actually Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, was born on 19 August 1883 in Saumur, a town on the Loire in western France. Coco grew up with her five siblings in poor conditions and was transferred at the age of twelve together with her older sister to the orphanage monastery Aubazine, when her mother had died in 1895. Gabrielle regularly spent her summer holidays with her aunt in Varennes-sur-Allier. At the age of 16, she was finally released from the orphanage and initially worked as a seamstress, but later she moved to Paris and performed in various nightclubs as a singer and dancer, where she mainly sang the songs "Ko Ko Ri Ko" and "Qui quâa vu Coco", which probably gave her nickname and later stage name "Coco". In 1910, she began her relationship with the wealthy Arthur Capel, who was a great support to her in her career. In the following years, she succeeded in becoming independent with a hat shop and later also with various fashion boutiques. In 1919, Coco's younger sister Antoinette died and her partner Capel was also killed in a car accident. A year later she moved into a villa in Paris and composer Igor Stravinsky also moved in for about two years with his wife and four children. Between Chanel and Stravinsky there was a short love affair, after which he fled alone to Biarritz. In 1921, Coco began her next love relationship with Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, the Tsar's nephew. From 1922 to 1924 she married the poet Pierre Reverdy, with whom she remained close friends after the divorce. In the same year, Coco met the Duke of Westminster and had a relationship with him until 1930. In 1932, Chanel's next love with Paul Iribe followed, but he died of heart failure in 1935. Chanel then moved to the Hotel "Ritz", retired from business life in 1939 during the war period and began a relationship with the German Hans Günther von Dincklage in 1940, which is why she was probably arrested briefly in 1944. The following year Coco went to Switzerland and had a close friendship with Dincklage until she returned to work in 1954 and moved back to the Parisian "Ritz", where she lived until the end of her life. While preparing for a new collection, Coco Chanel died in Paris on January 10, 1971.⁷

3.2) Lifestyle

The then usual female lifestyle of the compliant, weak and subordinate woman coco Chanel completely contradicted. So she was unmarried and had no children and thus no family of her own, which she had to worry about. Instead, her love life was marked by frequently changing relationships.

To keep her body in shape, Chanel exercised regularly. She also rebelled against the trend of noble pallor and preferred the tan as a sign of health and sportsmanship. Further, Coco stood out by her unsentimental and cynical nature⁸ as well as by its strong character and contrasting characteristics such as androgynous figure and female elegance from most contemporaries.⁹

Coco Chanel was very keen to make her her her firstT to disguise from the poor circumstances and denied much. She tried to shape her life afterwards to the public in the way that corresponded to her ideal idea.

"Just like she was able to work on the perfect case of a skirt for nights until everything turned out to her satisfaction."¹⁰

A large part of the information that can be found about them today thus corresponds more to Chanel's wishful thinking than to reality. Likewise, behind her pride and rebellious, self-confident nature, she hid the deeply entrenched sadness of her childhood.¹¹

3.3) View of fashion at that time

Chanel's rebellion against the image of women continued in fashion. In Coco's opinion, the woman was independent and not just a kind of accessory of the man, as it was often assumed at that time. Accordingly, the woman should wear clothes in which she not only looked good, but was just as mobile and comfortable. The tightly laced corset, the also ever tighter skirt of the dress as well as the mass of underwear and the use of stiff materials met with Coco's deepest incomprehension.

"Fashion has degenerated into a joke. Designers have forgotten that women are in their dresses. They must be able to move, to get into a car without their seams bursting, clothes must have a natural shape." - Coco Chanel¹²

Chanel saw aesthetics in simplicity, simplicity and at the same time elegant. She was of the opinion that expensive jewelry could not make a woman, who is not already beautiful by nature, more beautiful or valuable. The purpose of the jewelry is the ornament and a kind of honor of those in which proximity and for which one wears it. From women who generously adorned themselves with gold and precious stones to stand out, impress others and arouse envy, Chanel was repelled.¹³

" Why let yourself be hypnotized by a magnificent stone? Then you can hang a check around your neck. Jewelry has a color value, a mystical value, an ornamental value: all sorts of values, just not the one that can be expressed in carats." - Coco Chanel¹⁴

3.4) Creation of own fashion

3.4.1) Motivations

Coco Chanel's greatest motivation for the independent design of her own fashion was first of all her great dissatisfaction and rejection of contemporary fashion. In the beginning, the focus was on making the old and unwanted disappear. ¹⁵

"Not to create in fashion what I liked, but rather it was first and foremost about eliminating from fashion what I did not like." - Coco Chanel¹⁶

Also, Coco did not intend to create fashion for other women, but for herself. For example, she liked to do sports in her free time, but there was no sportswear for women, so she created some. As a further answer to the question of why she created fashion for a quarter of a century, Chanel said15: "Because I was able to express my epoch." ¹⁷ The persistent, ardent desire to escape from mediocrity ¹⁸ encouraged her in her actions and moved her to design a new and above all different fashion.

3.4.2) Ascent

Already during her stay in the orphanage, Coco Chanel spent half of her time in the werkraum, where she learned sewing and embroidery and practiced for a long time. At the age of 20, she began working in a knitwear company and could only dream of self-employment. After she had already created hats for friends in her spare time, she was finally able to start producing her own hats in the studio of a residential building in 1910 thanks to the financial support of her partner Arthur Capel and after a short time to open her first own hat shop in Paris. Coco gained great fame as a milliner through a very simple, large straw hat, which the actress Gabrielle Dorziat wore on stage in 1912. On behalf of the customers, Coco also began to design dresses with great success, so that in 1914 she was able to open the first fashion boutiques in Deauville and Biarritz, France, under the direction of her sister Antoinette. From 1915, the shop in Paris was considered chanel's main house. By 1916, Coco already employed 300 seamstresses and was able to pay Capel back all his money. In 1918, she brought the pajamas for women into the public eye, which was previously worn exclusively by men.

However, Coco Chanel did not make her breakthrough through fashion, but in 1923 with the perfume "Chanel No. 5", the first perfume that contains artificial flavors. In 1926 she designed the first and legendary "Little Black". In the following years, more boutiques were opened; In 1927 in the London district of Mayfair, in 1929 a boutique specializing in accessories in the Paris Salon and in 1934 a specialized studio for fashion jewelry. In addition, she designed costumes for various plays and ballets. In 1935 Chanel had about 4000 employees and saleste annually 28000 model dresses all over the world, so the international breakthrough was done.¹⁹

4) Coco Chanel’s influence

4.1) Fashion

4.1.1) Style

The new fashion style of Mademoiselle Chanel revolutionized any notion of fashion, aesthetics and elegance. Characteristic of this style is the special combination of practicality, simplicity and elegance, but also straightforwardness, comfort and a natural freedom of movement are characteristic. The cut of her clothes is fluid and close to the body, but by no means squeezes it in, as was previously customary due to the tightly laced corsets. Corsets damned Coco completely from the fashion world and she also dispensed with stiff materials as well as elaborate decorations and tulle. In terms of colors, Chanel preferred to choose simpler, with black and white clearly in the foreground. Due to the simplicity and simplicity of the style, it is easily imitatable and spread quickly, as even less wealthy customers could afford the fashion.²⁰

"Today's women's clothing is a result of any kind of Chanel's thoughts, experiments and "slag cures" - she mercilessly removed everything that seemed superfluous to her to reveal the content of a garment that modern women could wear (...)."²¹ "Simplicity is the keynote ofall true elegance." - Coco Chanel²²

Chanel's inspiration was largely men's fashion. So she took over the straight, wide cuts and accessories such as silk scarves and the tie.²³ She also used for the first time in fashion history the body-hugbing jersey, which was previously only used for men's underwear, for soft skirts and dresses, but also for female sports fashion. In the production of clothing, a particularly unusual and new way of working was noticeable. Coco often did not create designs, but stapled the fabrics together directly on the customer or on a tailor's doll, whereby the natural movements of the body could be taken into account to a special extent (see Annex I.V).²⁴

4.1.2) The Little Black

Coco Chanel's greatest success and trademark is the "little black", a famous classic of the fashion world, which was titled by "Vogue" as "a kind of uniform for all women with taste".²⁵ For the creation of this, Coco was inspired in an opera by the many colorful and richly decorated dresses, which she could not stand.

"Women have the whole color palette in their heads, but they never think about colorlessness. I said black withstands everything. White too. Both are absolutely beautiful. This is perfect harmony. Plug women for a ball in white or black: All eyes will be on them." - Coco Chanel²⁶

So she wanted to create something completely different and in the 1920s she designed a simple dress in black, reduced to the minimum, because it was through this color that the natural elegance of the woman would be best expressed.²⁷

"The black dresses of Chanel were considered revolutionary, because they seemed emancipatory on the one hand, and sexy on the other. (...) The perfectly cut onyx-colored dresses, some with a deep décolleté or playful irregular hems, seemed sensual in a mysterious, subliminal way."²⁸

The classic is narrowly cut and waistless, the length reaches to just below the knee, which was initially considered scandalous and caused an uproar due to the freedom of movement. The little black was made of comfortable fabrics such as chiffon, viscose or supple wool. Occasionally Coco put her creations with sequins or lace to decorate. The dress gained fame through popular wearers such as Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe (see Annex I.VI). At the latest when Audrey Hepburn appeared in the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in the little black man (see Annex I.VII) the breakthrough was achieved.²⁹

[...]

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¹ cf. Schmitz, Kläre (22.01.2014)

² cf. Sievi, Beata (22.01.2014)

³ cf. 0381 - Stadt- und Kulturmagazin (23.01.2014)

⁴ cf. http:// www.gewandschneider.de /galerie/belleepoque/body_belleepoque.html (27.01.2014)

⁵ cf. Wikipedia, URL: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-Ventre-Linie (23.01.2014)

⁶ cf. Bürklin, Jürgen, URL: http://www.was-war wann.de/mode/mode_1900.html (27.01.2014)

⁷ cf. Morand, Paul (01.02.2013)

⁸ cf. Focus (28.01.2014)

⁹ cf. Bild der Frau (28.01.2014)

¹⁰ quote Zilkowski, Katharina:"Le style c’est moi!" Coco Chanel, p.10

¹¹ Cf. ibid. p.10f.

¹² quote 0381 - Stadt- und Kulturmagazin (28.01.2014)

¹³ cf. Morand, Paul, pp. 160-162

¹⁴ Quote, ibid. p.19 f.

¹⁵ cf. Morand, Paul, pp. 193, 202

¹⁶ Quotation ibid., p. 202

¹⁷ Quote ibid., p. 193

¹⁸ cf. Vogue: Coco Chanel (02/01/2014)

¹⁹ cf. Vogue: Coco Chanel (01.02.2014); Morand Paul, pp. 275 - 278; Who’s who (01.02.2014)

²⁰ cf. Vogue: Coco Chanel; 0381 - Stadt- und Kulturmagazin (06.02.2014)

²¹ quote Buxbaum, Gerda, p. 27

²² quote http:// www.cocochanelquotes.org /simplicity-is-the-keynote-of-all-true-elegance (08.02.2014)

²³ cf. Frankfurter Allgemeine: Designer ABC. Chanel, Coco (02/08/2014)

²⁴ cf. Vogue: Coco Chanel (02/08/2014)

²⁵ quote ModeopferllO (08.02.2014)

²⁶ quote Morand, Paul, p. 208f.

²⁷ cf. 0381 - Stadt- und Kulturmagazin (08.02.2014)

²⁸ quote Cosgrave, Bronwyn: Vogue on Coco Chanel, p. 76

²⁹ cf. ModeopferllO; Vogue: Coco Chanel (02/08/2014)

• Grade: 15 points
• Author: Nathalie Möller (Author)
• Publication Year: 2014
• Pages: 34
• Catalog Number: V1170972
• ISBN (PDF): 9783346585998
• Language: English
• Tags: coco, chanel, pioneer