![]() ![]() ![]() 5, as well as the Chanel suit with a fitted skirt, inspired by the boxy lines of men’s clothing and employing a sporty tweed.Ĭhanel closed her fashion operations during World War II, then returned to the industry in 1954 to design for the functional needs of modern women. That same decade, she debuted her perfume, Chanel No. In 1926, she introduced her first little black dress, reclaiming a color that had once been reserved for mourning and working-class women. It was there that she learned to sew as well as appreciate the classic pairing of black and white as worn by the nuns. Following the death of her mother, her father left her in an orphanage where she lived until the age of 18. She followed this success with a couture house, opened in 1915 in Biarritz.īut Chanel was not born into a life of glamour. Soon she added a sportswear store in the Normandy resort town of Deauville, where Coco set the tone for her defining sense of style - traditionally masculine garments reimagined for feminine shapes, made from simple jersey fabric.Įffortless and elegant, Chanel's designs promoted comfort and grace in women’s wear that had been dominated in the previous century by complicated layers of fabric and cumbersome corsets. The boutique drew the attention of the Parisian fashion elite who popularized her wide-brimmed Chanel Modes hats. The first Chanel shop was established in 1910 in Paris on rue Cambon by the young milliner Gabrielle Chanel (1883–1971), who had picked up the nickname “Coco” while working as a club singer. Today vintage Chanel handbags, jackets and evening dresses are among the most sought-after clothing and accessories for fashion lovers all over the world. Here’s what it was actually like to go backstage at Couture Fashion Week in the 1990s.In the years following the opening of her modest millinery shop, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel became a pivotal designer of both fashionable casual wear and Paris haute couture as well as an icon and arbiter of 20th-century style with her bob haircut and pearls. It was chaotic - but this was the good kind of chaos, which we all miss in 2021. Mariah Carey caught her 1990s couture shows while cuddling her puppy and late supermodel Stella Tennant would arrive on the back of a motorbike. This was the decade when you could spot Sylvester Stallone (again, minus publicity entourage) loitering near the backstage entrance, and Richard Gere might be passing through to meet Cindy Crawford. Supermodels prepped their own makeup backstage, film star Rosanna Arquette took her seat, unaccompanied, for the Chanel couture catwalk presentation and waited patiently for the show to start. It was in the 1990s that the resplendence of couture came varnished with rebellion. Exactly a year earlier, another British star of the nouvelle avant garde, John Galliano, had unveiled his debut couture collection for Dior and the once-serene salons were now resolutely chock full of Hollywood celebrities, mingling with rock stars, pop stars and royalty. Rather unsurprisingly, the feathers of the old-world powers of couturiers had been ruffled. ![]() ‘They don’t think I’m some silly little kid from London fussing around with a hemline.’” I think they really like me up there,’ he says, pointing to the ceiling and the Givenchy workrooms beyond. ‘You know, I worked for Marc Bohan when he was at Hartnell, and it was the worst experience of my life. “McQueen seems pleased with the way things are going, especially with the ateliers. ![]() “We’re sitting in the big salon, an elegant room that has fallen into some disrepair, vases of half-dead flowers perched on an ugly makeshift coffee table,” Betts continued. “He’s got a lot of gumption,” Vogue journalist Kate Betts wrote of her pre-show encounter with McQueen in a lengthy extract, which I strenuously advise you to read in full here. The upshot? McQueen had piqued the attention of the world’s press with his no-bullshit attitude as much as his knife-sharp corsetry. Just the day before, a 27-year-old British designer by the name of Alexander McQueen had presented his debut couture collection for Givenchy, entitled Search for the Golden Fleece. As Vogue reported, that particular January in Paris, the halls and hotel suites at the Ritz (Couture Fashion Week’s unofficial HQ) were buzzing with word of a “showdown”. “It’s about Chanel proportions and luxury pushed to absolute nervous-breakdown extremes!” Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand woman Amanda Harlech told Vogue’s Hamish Bowles backstage at the house’s spring 1997 couture show. Kristen McMenamy, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Karen Mulder at Chanel haute couture fall/winter 1993. ![]()
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