“What I’ve done, Coco Chanel would never have done. She would have hated it.” (Karl Lagerfeld)
Functionality is something that we rarely think. But functionality is important in how we live. What we use in our lives, how we physically live, how we communicate, how we dress. It’s hard to believe a factor that we rarely think of, played such a huge part in liberating Western European women.
Take my little black dress. My little black dress has always been there for me. Throughout all kinds of functions; long weddings, even longer birthdays, weather changes and even funerals.
But the little black dress has come a long way. During the Victorian era (1837–1901), black was only worn for funerals and functionality was a word rarely used in conjunction to women or to fashion. Women were to tend to their homes, had no right to vote or to own property. Women’s fashion consisted of elaborate, heavy, colourful dresses. Fashion only existed among the most wealthy. It was fashionable to have a small waist, so women would wear corsets, tightly pulled by their chamber maids. Coco Chanel grew up around this time.
Born as Gabrielle Chanel, in 1883, in the small town of Saumur, Chanel grew up in stark poverty. Chanel’s grand-parents were farmers but when the crop failed, they went on the road and became market traders. As Chanel’s father
Chanel’s father followed in his parents’ foot steps and Chanel, who will later become one of the richest women in France, spent most of her childhood travelling from fair to fair being in the company of two sisters, two brothers, an alcoholic father and an ill mother.
In 1895, when Chanel was twelve years old, her mother died. Chanel was devastated. What made matters even worse was that her father proclaimed himself a free man and decided to abandon them at a Catholic orphanage, in Aubazine. The time spent at the orphanage was difficult for Chanel. She felt ashamed of her living father who abandoned her and her siblings. Being left, unloved, at the age of twelve, permanently scarred her emotionally.
In 1900, Chanel was moved out of the orphanage to a boarding school, in Moulins, where she was taken in out of charity. After leaving Moulins, Chanel attempted to become a cabaret singer. This is when she adapted the stage name “Coco”. She failed as a Cabaret singer but soon, at the age of 20, started working at a Tailor shop, where she later became the seamstress of a wealthy Military Officer, Etienne Balsan. It was through Balsan that Chanel met the inner circles of Paris and started designing hats for wealthy women.
Chanel’s contribution to women’s history has often been underestimated. Chanel was ahead of her time. She was the first woman to take off her corset and changed the way women lived their lives. Chanel often said that fashion was not just in dresses, but in the times that we were living in. It wasn’t just Chanel’s designs that made her the most successful woman in the world, but the way she changed the nature of women’s clothing. Chanel’s little black dress has survived and will continue surviving because of its versatility and comfort. Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel had an impact onto world history by changing women’s clothing from restricting Victorian corsets to the beginning of what became modern, contemporary clothes.
In the 1920s, she launched her first perfume and eventually introduced the Chanel suit and the little black dress, with an emphasis on making clothes that were more comfortable for women. (Biography.com)
She liberated women from constrictive clothing by making clothes that women could move in. Her designs were a symbol of the independent woman she was.
“She was a force of nature. She was very impressive in many, many ways,” Chaney said. “And I think she gave women — all of the 20th and 21st century — I think she gave us an enormous amount. It really wasn’t just the clothes. The clothes were a reflection of her life.”
