She was the most copied designer in the whole wide world, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel. Single handed, after the end of the First World War, she ridiculed women out of their stays and corsets; draped their new-found bodies in simple dresses and suits of supple wool jersey.
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel The most copied designer of all time was the first liberated woman of fashion Critics said she was making ladies look like their maids, but as her inexorable will prevailed, the mode changed. And as she liberated the stride of the women of that era, she also freed up their minds. Elaborate chignons tumbled to short-cropped, fringed hair; extravagances of the milliners’ art yielded to the youthful charm of simple sailors; strings of priceless rubies and emeralds, gifts from hosts of princely admirers, were worn casually as if mere beads and the style of the twentieth century was born.
With a clear sense of herself, gallantly unconcerned with society’s norms, she had many lovers no husband. And though in France, even now, an unmarried woman of a certain age is respectfully called madame, she insisted on being addressed as mademoiselle to the end of her life in 1971.
She was an original; certainly the first liberated woman of fashion, a discipline, until her time, dominated by men with fustian concepts of hampered femininity.
Women across the space dominated by Western dress even beyond, as the globe shrinks cherish Chanel suits, well aware they are the passe partout, the quiet symbols of savvy style that wrest good tables from ever-so-haughty head waiters, no matter where you find yourself.
The status to many is worth the price, around $1,800 at Creeds, which has the only Chanel boutique in this country.
But for a few seasons now, the sheen has departed the style. After her death, the designers hired to foot pad in her image were too awestruck by the responsibility to dare originality.
Herve Leger tried to reverse that burdensome seriousness last season in the fall merchandise now in stores but his notions were occasionally too body-revealing, so in touch with the mainstream of current fashion that they violated Chanel’s cherished easy classicism.
Karl Lagerfeld, the top-of-the-line designer who comes as new boy to Chanel, has his spurs more than matured via long stints with Chloe in Paris and Fendi furs, Rome. His spring-summer collection could make us all believers.
His concepts are executed with remarkable discretion; clearly he’s done his research with respect.
His Chanel clothes have lightened up, trading a touch, just a touch of tradition for a profound understanding of the contemporary.
Chanel, were she alive today, might have played an even higher card. Lagerfeld is close to a well-cut vest but as worthy successor he, like his mentor, has made clothes so currently sensible they’re bound to be copied.
Chanel always insisted that the copyists gave her pleasure. They cast her tasteful bread on ever wider waters. Let’s hope that Mr. Lagerfeld, faced with the same sort of unpaid-for emulation, shares her generosity.
