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The growth of modern fashion industry could be attributed to Gabrielle Chanel who was fondly called ‘Coco Chanel’, the very creative French fashion designer. She founded The House of Chanel. Chanel clothing was widely admired, and women from all segments began wearing them in the mid twentieth century. She proclaimed that “Fashion must come up from the streets”, and her designs were the perfect blend between style and utility (Davis 431). She perceived fashion in every sphere of human life ranging from sky, street, and the very way we live.
Chanel’s influence on the fashion industry is still evident. Society witnessed rampant change quickly after the World War I, and the new scenario intensified the growth of Chanel’s industry. Women who wanted to dance, drive, and walk around town found new clothing more convenient when compared to the old and traditional corset or crinoline, the clothing of Victorian era.
As Davis points out, Chanel played a very important role in creating and developing ‘an ideal of artistic modernism’ characterized with simplicity and everyday style. Her charisma was not limited to the fashion industry, but it had profound impact on the other art forms including music. In other words, her styles and personal relationships gave way to emergence of the musical style of the 1920s, which Cocteau described as “music on which one walks.” (Davis 432).
Coco Chanel’s name is always remembered whenever the art and music movement of the 1920s is discussed. The great movement witnessed the works of Chanel’s contemporaries like Diaghilev, Picasso, Stravinsky and Cocteau. Like these great personalities, Chanel also broke the conventional formulas of art and invented a unique way for expressing herself. According to Cocteau, “by a kind of miracle she has worked in fashion according to rules that would seem to have value only for painters, musicians, and poets.” (432).
Obviously, she wanted to be independent and different in every respect.
The term “chic” referred to Chanel’s multiple styles and their originality in a single concept. It was her friendship with Misia Sert that helped her to enter into the world of art. She came across a number of artists and fashionable friends, including Diaghilev and all these contributed to the field of art in several ways. To illustrate, she became an integral part of Diaghilev’s enterprise by joining his “inner circle of dancers, painters, and librettists as a collaborating artist” (437). Stravinsky, who had been living in Chanel’s villa, came up with revolutionary shifts in orchestration. This was termed as “a move toward a “denuded stripped-down, style” and the “most anti-Wagnerian of musicians”, also was the clear indication of Chanel’s influence.
Obviously, among the key artists who made a lasting impression on art in the art and music movement of the 1920s, Coco Chanel (1883–1971) deserves special credit. Chanel’s through her own lifestyle reflected the ideas of how modern women should look, behave, and dress. Chanel’s slim boyish figure became an ideal female style. Her brown skin also gained attention. Furthermore, her vigorous lifestyle and independence were admired as the essential characteristics of womanhood. Throughout her career, Chanel successfully marketed her own personal styles coupled with other art forms including music and art. She thus became a key authority of women’s preferences throughout the century. It was such elegance and intelligence she demonstrated made Pablo Picasso say that “Chanel is the woman with the most sense in Europe” (qtd in Davis, 431).
Works Cited
Davis, Mary. “Chanel, Stravinsky, and Musical Chic”. Fashion Theory (2006), 10. 4:. 431–460.
