Coco Chanel and Fashion by Julia Ying Xiang Wei
INTRODUCTION
The clothing always with the fashion and the tidal current relates in together. Created the modern style of clothing works is the most designers’ common pursuit and more and more women put much value on their self-expression and self-satisfaction. As their mind of fashion is getting mature, they desire to make themselves individual and differentiated from others. Compare the characteristic of Chanel style between modern and postmodern period, under the influence of romanticism, currently, various Chanel styles in 1950s such as Chanel tweed jackets, pearl necklace, and two-tone shoes are being highlighted.
The purpose of this thesis is, through a comprehensive approach, to discover what the Chanel Style is and the source of the force that has continuous pertained it through the years. On the theoretical research, this thesis will try to study of fashion design based on Chanel Style.
The methods of research used for reading were precedent thesis, fashion related documents, and art history documents. Also, I have referred to fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and Elle, the Chanel portfolio, the book that is to tell about Coco Chanel and the history about Chanel Company, and etc. On the bases of this theoretical research, this thesis will try to study of fashion design using the Chanel Style. By doing this, it has intended to expand new ways of expressing clothes and to find out the most effective ways of developing competitive designs that are oriented in individuality and diversity.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Queen of twentieth century fashion
Coco Chanel has been acclaimed as the most important fashion innovator in the twentieth century. Her interpretation of “fashion” was a totally new concept for a new century – she designed clothes that were easy to wear, flattering, and timeless. She was the first designer to create and market a perfume that did not smell only of flowers. She also made Chanel accessories – rows of pearls, fake brooches, and quilted purses – part of the fashion industry. (David, 1997, p.2) Chanel sold a style of dress more than a fashion. Her style was as revolutionary as the times she lived through from the twenties to the seventies; it mirrored the changes, especially women’s growing freedom.
The Chanel style was very simple and straightforward. She believed that, “how clothes are worn is much more important than what is worn; that a good line is worth more than a pretty face; that well dressed is not the same as dressy, and that the acme of social cachet was to be proletarian. Youth should not have to declare itself, is should be obvious all the time; in sitting down, getting into a car, walking down the street, stretching out a leg or raising an arm.” (Baudot, 1996)
[Available from: http://web.syr.edu/~jkbouche/ret181/chanel%201web.html]
Forming a style
The Chanel suit is the most influential inspired work in the modern period. This kind of fashion causes the women extricated from the hard and tight-fitting clothing, which is fetter human body through the long-term. It was the pioneering work and the changes, has affected the entire European clothing development, and simultaneously has promoted sports dress. It was the beginning of a matter for the feminine outdoors activity, and also provided simple and free leisure look
Chanel was raised in a French orphanage. The simplistic and stark dress of the nuns and their environment influenced Chanel’s designs. Her simple little black dresses, squarish suits, and almost boyish designs suits were vastly divergent from the confining and tight-fitting corsets and long dresses with petticoats. By the mid ’20s, Chanel’s comfortable and practical “working costume” designs flourished and she opened two boutiques: one in Paris and the other in Biarritz. Together these shops employed over 300 people. (Joseph, 1997)
[Available from:http://www.coololdstuff.com/coco.html]
The Chanel fashion concept came from influences rooted in Coco’s modest background and early life experiences. The work clothes that were worn by the adults around her helped convince Coco that all women, whatever their situation, needed less elaborate, more loosely fitting clothes for their increasingly active live. (David, 1997, p.14)
Chanel established a range of classic twentieth century basic styles – flatteringly cut tailored jackets, easy fitting over blouses, knitted tops, practical length wraparound or pleated skits, and slip-like sheath dresses. All Chanel’s details were important and useful; the cuffs, buttons and pockets were where the wearer expected to find them. (David, 1997, p.36)
New directions
Before No.5, perfume was based on floral scents. Women would smell of one flower or a combination of several. Although the products were highly concentrated, they faded quickly. In a small square bottle, over eighty ingredients were mixed to create this amazing perfume. The fragrance was launched in 1921 and named No. 5, after her lucky number. By 1929 it had become the best selling perfume in the world and remained one of the most famous and commercially successful of the century. Her fortune was to be built on her creation, Chanel No.5. Chanel believed her perfume should be an expression of her fashion concept and complement the spirit of contemporary art and design. “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future” was one of Coco’s many sayings. (David, 1997, p.42)
What was even more amazing about this perfume was that this was the first time that a designer mixed with the perfume business. In the past it was very unusual for a designer to advertise with a perfume, and yet again Chanel became a new trendsetter. Marilyn Monroe referred to this perfume when she claimed it was the only thing she wore to bed.
Hollywood
In 1931, Samuel Goldwin hired Chanel for one million dollars to dress his stars, including Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and Gloria Swanson. This lasted for a very short time, however, as many starlets refused her service. Later that decade, back in her hometown, Chanel designed and developed an array of costume jewelry inspired by the “art deco” movement of the ’30s. (Joseph, 1997)
[Available from:http://www.coololdstuff.com/coco.html]
The New Yorker magazine claimed, “Chanel, the famous Paris couturier, makes a lady look like a lady; Hollywood wants a lady to look like two ladies.”
Although initially disappointing, both sides learned from the experience – Chanel understood the importance of making her designs a little bolder and more photogenic, and Hollywood learned the value of dressing its newer, sophisticated stars in slow-to-date, quieter, elegant clothes, which were to prove ideal for the more mature mood of many classic 1930s and 1940s movies. (David, 1997, p.54)
The Chanel Suit
Her logo was known all over the world .The most important of all her accomplishments has to be the famous Chanel suit. The classic Chanel suit had boxy lines, a braided trim and slim skirt lined with gold link chain. The buttons look like coins with the Chanel “CC” logo. The skirts were designed for practicality. There was a ribbon sewn into the waist of the skirt to prevent the blouse from becoming untucked and the zipper was always on the side for comfort. “In a sense, wearing a Chanel suit is like wearing a customized ornate costume, made to fit so that when the wearer moves, the suit still maintains perfect grace and elegance.” Traditional accessories to accompany a suit would generally be many pearls and gold chains, real and faux gems mixed together, two-toned shoes and quilted handbags with chain shoulder straps. In addition to the skirt suit, she bravely introduced fashionable pants for women as well. Pants were never an option for women in this age, yet Chanel made it possible. (Joseph, 2001)
[Available from:http://www.coololdstuff.com/coco.html]
Chanel had been the first designer to adapt so – called “street fashion” – work-wear, traditional men’s styles, country clothes, and sports garments had all inspired her more practical approach to designing clothes for everyday life. Gabrielle Chanel is creating more than a fashion: a revolution.
Chanel after Coco
At the Ritz Hotel in Paris on January 10, 1971, Coco Chanel died at age eighty-seven. For about a decade afterwards, her studio and fashion house were put on a hold. It wasn’t until 1983, that Karl Lagerfeld took control and revived the Chanel Empire. Lagerfeld worked by the slogan he borrowed from Goethe, which said, “Make a better future by developing elements from the past.” With his genius and mindset, he has continued to carry out the Chanel tradition long after her death. (Baudot, 1996)
[Available from: http://web.syr.edu/~jkbouche/ret181/chanel%201web.html]
Lagerfeld was employed to design for both the couture and the ready-to-wear collections. His interpretation of up-market fashion suited the times. He reshaped and updated the Chanel image to the “power-dressed” idea. All aspects of Chanel merchandise were revised to follow the trend for rich looking, extrovert fashions. It was a great commercial success. The company was artfully promoted and commercialized into one of the most valuable brand names in the fashion and beauty industry. (David, 1997, p.108)
RECOMMENDATION
Fashion is a principal part of the figure that in a certain space or circumstance, all kind of fashion couldn’t leave without corresponding space and circumstance. (刘元风，李迎军, 2005, p.3)
Fashion and its circumstance should be set off and coordinate, unify each other, to make a harmonious visual sense of beauty. Also, fashion need accessories to contrast with adapt it to circumstances. The accessories are including jewelries, scarves, hats, sunglasses, handbags, gloves and some shoes. Fashion is clothing that in current of the times, different from the fashion style in the past. Fashion is a limited sphere that has the setting with space, so fashion is not only being confined to contemporary style.
The fashion is the use of a particular form of thinking, esthetics rule and the operation procedure, first use drawing tools to design concept expressed by the direct-viewing image, and the selection of appropriate materials through the corresponding tailoring methods and sew crafts for orderly shaped design concept for products process.
The fashion design is a comprehensive overlapping application discipline, also is cultural art and the science and technology entity. Fashion design of modeling, materials, colors, tailoring and sewing links between a mutual checks and complementary relationship, because clothing is embodied in the code of consumers after the formation of a beauty, not just for clothing design materials, colors, design techniques, but also to consumers as a whole code of design. From the contemporary material culture and the fashion culture angle of view, fashion design is the design of a way of life for consumers.
It has three kinds of primary factors in modeling affects the design, colors and materials. In these three kind of essential factors, the design is the most important consideration, because the design plays the main body skeleton role, it is the foundation of clothing modeling, materials constitute models of the basic material, whether simple or complex models are needed to be reflected and shaped by the material. And the color of clothing is a major factor in the overall visual effects. These three elements in the garment and apparel shaped design process is both a relationship of interdependence and mutual restraint, and neither is dispensable. And in different types of clothing design, the three elements of the master and use the yardstick is their focus.
Fashion design is the applied art dedicated to the creation of wearing apparel and lifestyle. The dress designing is an artistic activity, and it is a kind of special artistic practice form. The dress designing has the artistic creation, which the artistic activity presents, the artistic appreciation and the artistic criticism form, also has dress designing oneself to have “the transformation” the characteristic. Art took one kind “the spiritual productive forces”, namely manifests shows off to the stability and inherits the nature, also manifests the freedom, the originality and the national characteristic, it creates the goal is needs to satisfy the people mind earnestly seeking with the spiritual need, realizes its esthetic value. Therefore, said from this significance, art also is the humanity creates the world according to the beautiful rule, simultaneously defers to no rule to create own practice. Fashion design is arts ideals, and arts requirements, by the artistic ability performance creation intention activity, it is the utility and the surmounting fusion unification, is esthetic and the practical fusion unification, also is the reality needs and the ideal reappearance fusion unification.
Some famous composers were defined as: ” Modern fashion design is a state of the human dress, is an item by serviceability, efficiency, the scientific nature, artistry, the epidemic, the time organic synthesis; is the material of human being. “ (王珉, 2004, p.114) The achievement displays the human body, and a design esthetic is the sense of art. Wearing is the way of expression, and choice the source of material, utilizes some techniques to express the idea, integrate and coordinate clothing with consumer and model, it is the process of practicality and it can combine incarnate with assume artistically.
We may see from the clothing style aspect, under the modern attention influence, the clothing has extremely explicitly trend direction, after but the postmodern dress designing actually is ponders over with difficulty, either classical or modern, either elegant, or coquettish with the fashion world. On the fashion modeling either tight or loose, either long or short, people have the free choice; break the phase, which is designers lead trend in the former days.
“The modern fashion designers often break the old style, simultaneously to find the new style, some designers in the postmodern period, dissociated between all kinds of style, gained non- style. This is the style at that time.” (包铭新, 曹喆, 2001, p.82)
The human clothing history has experienced flectional and long-terms process of evolvement. (刘鸿, 2005, p.8) In summarize, the early clothing was carries on two different masterstrokes, take upper classes of society’s palace clothing as a representative, would get up the main characteristic was for demonstrate the official rank, dignity and dignitary; the another one was lower classes’ common people clothing as a representative, its primarily goal was resists the bise and swelter.
On the 20th century, France as the central, Western European fashion appeared a historical transition. In the past, they used the high-level handicraft manufacture, now combined with mechanizations and slopwork.
Late 80 to beginning of 90’s in the 20th century, along with the western economy decline and the people have esthetic idea transformation, people used to long terms of substance already, they begin to be sick of the life in high technology period, and also tried to leave away from the strict and ugly society, yearn for a kind of comfortable and peaceful life, therefore fashion design appeared new tendency. The main characteristic was esteems the traditional culture and the nationality art style pursue natural affective tone as well as the initial state.
Since has entered to the 21st century, along with international integrated progress, various countries in economy, culture, technical domain exchange and cooperated closer, the cultural multiplication is more obvious, the world culture vs. the national culture, the modern culture vs. traditional culture, the mainstream culture vs. the fashion culture, between the outstanding culture and the popular culture seeps mutually, promoted each other, the fashion designing is more and more tend to diversification and individuation, also the market and people’s esthetic tendency.
CONCLUSION
Chanel has had significant influence on modern fashion. On the bases of her firm philosophy that mode is not an art but is a technology. She has been promoted functional fashion, also she has introduced Chanel style’s concept of total fashion and expanded the accessory market. She has enhanced the development of ready-made clothing industry and elevated the position of couture. Compare the characteristic of fashion style between modern and postmodern period, fashion design made the big improvement through today, the future of fashion design is bright.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
David, Bond. Translated by Lu yan（1997） Coco Chanel and Chanel World books publishing house
Baudot, Francois. (1996). Universe of Fashion: Chanel New York Universe/Vendome.
Web: http://web.syr.edu/~jkbouche/ret181/chanel%201web.html
Joseph, Aime. (2001). Coco Chanel: Innovator and Icon. Cool Old Stuff, Retrieved February 24, 2001 from the World Wide Web:http://www.coololdstuff.com/coco.html
Wang Min（2004）Fashion ·Fashion Design Art Hebei educational publishing house
Wu Yong（1995）Fashion Art Heilongjiang educational publishing house
Wu Rongrong（2001）Modern Fashion Design Literature Chinese spinning and weaving university publishing house
Liu Yuanfeng，Li Yingjun（2005）Modern Fashion Art Design Qinghua University publishing house
Bao Mingxin，Cao zhe（2001）Overseas Fashion in Postmodern period Jiangsu fine arts publishing house
Liu Hong（2005）The women’s Fashion History Hundred flowers literary arts publishing house
One Response to “Coco Chanel and Fashion by Julia Ying Xiang Wei”
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August 30th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
A well-written paper on Chanel and her contributions to fashion.
The paper has covered quite in-depth how Chanel has changed the way women dress. Her impact on modern dress sense of comfort and practicality has influenced the way for designers, even in this present times.
An interesting read for all!