COCO (KOH-koh)
Pioneering
French fashion designer of the 20th-century
Common
clues: Designer
Chanel; First name in fashion; Ms. Chanel; First name in
fragrances
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
3 times a year
Frequency
in English language:
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News:
Coco
Chanel Shacked Up With A Nazi Spy & Did Drugs, New Book
Reveals
Video:
Inside
Coco Chanel’s Private Apartment
The
most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud ~
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle
Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (August 19, 1883 – January
10, 1971) was a pioneering French fashion designer whose
modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of
expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure
in the history of 20th-century fashion. Her influence on haute
couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be
named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th
century.
Gabrielle
"Coco" Chanel's stylish, elegant designs revolutionized
fashion during the 1910s, freeing women from the uncomfortable
and stiff apparel worn at the end of the 19th century. Chanel
furthered her own image: the woman of the 20th century, embodying
independence, success, personality, style, and confidence.
The
influential Chanel suit, launched in 1924, was an elegant outfit
composed of a knee-length skirt paired with a trim, boxy jacket,
traditionally made of woven wool with black trim and gold buttons
and worn with large costume-pearl necklaces.
Chanel
also popularized the little black dress, whose blank-slate
versatility allowed it to be worn for both day and night. The
black Chanel dress was strapless, backless and more than a little
risque. It shocked the general public at large but quickly became
a fashion sensation. The Chanel dress premiered in the third ever
edition of Playboy. This added to the controversy surrounding the
Chanel name.
Much
imitated over the years, Chanel's designs were manufactured
across more price categories than any other in the high-fashion
world. It was Chanel who also introduced 'costume' jewellery to
the world of fashion, using a variety of accessories such as
necklaces, chains or pearls of several strands. A bag with golden
handles, an elegant pearl necklace, a tailleur dressed in black
are the symbols of elegance and status that marked forever the
history of fashion. But it was Chanel No. 5 - considered the
number-one selling perfume in the world - which helped her become
a millionaire. The perfume was created in 1921 by Ernest Beaux at
the request of Chanel, who said about the perfume that it was "a
woman's perfume with the scent of woman." Its Art Deco
bottle was incorporated into the permanent collection at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959. Chanel No. 5 was the
first synthetic perfume to take the name of a designer. One of
Coco Chanel's most famous quotes is, "This perfume is not
just beautiful and fragrant. It contains my blood and sweat and a
million broken dreams."
All
of her clothes were emblazoned with the famous Chanel symbol;
this, however, was not of her own design. The symbol was given to
her by the owner of the Chateau de Cremat (a Chateau on the
outskirts of Nice in the south of France). In 1923, she told
Harper's Bazaar that "simplicity is the keynote of all true
elegance." Chanel always kept the clothing she designed
simple and comfortable and revealing. She took what were
considered poor fabrics like jersey and upgraded them. She was
instrumental in helping to design the image of the 1920's flapper
(The term flapper in the 1920s referred to a "new breed"
of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened
to new Jazz music, and flaunted their disdain for what was then
considered acceptable behavior. The flappers were seen as brash
for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual
manner, smoking, driving automobiles,showing a lot of skin, and
otherwise flouting conventional social and sexual norms). The
German designer Karl Lagerfeld is, since 1983, the art director
of Chanel, both for the haute couture and prêt-à-porter.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Coco Chanel".
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