The Colors - Inside CHANEL

Haute Couture - Inside CHANEL

The jacket - Inside CHANEL

The Lion - Inside CHANEL

 

The lion is majestic.
One can admire it, fear it, chase it, conquer it.
Gabrielle Chanel decides to tame it.
The lion is "Koko", born August 5th under the fifth sign of the zodiac.
The two numbers would become her good luck charm,
the lion would be her constellation.
The lion is a personality -
audacious, instinctive, passionate, radiant.
"I'm a Leo and, like him,
I show my claws to protect myself." Mademoiselle declared,
"... but believe me I suffer more by clawing than being clawed," she added.
The lion is an emblem.
All her life Gabrielle Chanel kept a small statue of the "King of Animals"
beside her cigarettes and her scissors,
and engraved it upon the buttons of her tweed suits.
The lion is an inspiration.
A favourite subject of CHANEL jewelry,
it roars from necklaces, pendants and brooches
as if to protect the secrets of Mademoiselle
and watch over her for all eternity.

The lion is the spirit of CHANEL.

Coco - Inside CHANEL

Chapter 5 Coco
Once upon a time…
There lived a little girl who hid her humble origins all her life
and preferred to invent her own legend.

Once upon a time…
Gabrielle Chanel was born under the sign of the lion
to a travelling peddler
and a laundress who died at 32, exhausted by life.

Once upon a time…
There was a father who abandoned his five children
and had his three daughters sent away to an orphanage.

At twelve years old, Gabrielle would never see him again.

Forever after, she pretended that he had left to make his way in America.

Once upon a time…
There was an orphanage behind the walls of a convent:
the Abbey of Aubazine, where Gabrielle spent nearly seven years.

The Romanesque purity of this ascetic world
would inspire her sense of austerity
and her taste for black and white,
while the opulence of religious garments and ceremonial objects
would spark her fascination with baroque style,
gold and colored gems in years to come.

Once upon a time…
There was a beautiful young girl who spent her days sewing
and her nights singing in a cabaret,
before troops of cavalrymen.

She was called “Coco”
because she often sang “Who has seen Coco in the Trocadero?”
She always preferred to pretend that Coco was the nickname given to her by her father.

Once upon a time…
A young woman with a boyish allure
refused to ride sidesaddle on the horses of a well-born cavalier,
Etienne Balsan.

She dressed like no one else,
taking her inspiration from masculine attire
and inventing new styles of hats, which she stripped of their birds
and feathers to make them simpler, lighter, more chic.

Her first clients were working girls, but society quickly followed.

Once upon a time…
There was a great love, named Boy Capel.

English, wealthy and cultivated,
he was the man of her dreams.

He introduced her to literature, the Orient, and the esoteric.

Boy helped Coco become Chanel.

She decided to open her first boutiques
in Paris, Deauville and Biarritz.

She wanted to work to win her liberty.

Once upon a time…
A revolution came to pass when,
in a stroke of genius,
Coco Chanel transformed the female silhouette.

She shortened dresses,
revealed ankles,
freed the waist,
eliminated corsets, revived jersey,
cut her hair and bronzed her skin.

Chanel closed one era and launched a new century of fashion.

Once upon a time…
At 31, rue Cambon,
Mademoiselle Chanel opened her first couture house in Paris in 1918.

The little country girl from Auvergne,
the orphan of Aubazine, had become the queen of Paris.

Before liberating women, she had liberated herself.

Once upon a time…
There was a love story that ended abruptly.

Boy Capel died in a car accident.

For the first and last time, Coco Chanel was seen to cry.

“Either I die as well,” she said, “or I finish what we started together.”
She chose to go on.

To be continued…

CHANEL N°5 - For the first time - Inside CHANEL

INSIDE CHANEL
CHAPTER 1 N°5
For the first time,
a couturier revolutionizes the insular world of perfume
by creating in 1921
her own fragrance, the first of its kind.
Coco Chanel seeks, in her own words,
"a woman's perfume with a woman's scent."
Her scent should be as important as her style of dress.
"A woman," she says, "should wear perfume
wherever she would like to be kissed."
For the first time,
N°5 defies the conventions of perfume,
which glorify single flower fragrances.
Coco Chanel calls upon Ernest Beaux, perfumer to the Czars.
In search of inspiration,
Ernest Beaux ventures as far as the Arctic circle,
finding his muse in the exhilarating air
issuing from the northern lakes under the midnight sun.
The couturier encourages him to be ever more audacious,
demanding still more jasmine, the most precious of essences.
May rose, Haitian vetiver, ylang-ylang,
sandalwood, orange blossom, essence of Neroli,
Brazilian Tonka beans...
He composes a bouquet of over 80 scents for her.
An abstract, mysterious perfume
radiating an extravagance floral richness.
For the first time,
N°5 transforms the alchemy of scent
through Ernest Beaux's innovative use of aldehydes,
synthetic components which exalt perfumes,
like lemon which accentuates the taste of strawberry.
Aldehydes add layers of complexity,
making N°5 ever more mysterious
and impossible to decipher.
For the first time,
N°5, a code, an identification number,
makes the sentimental names for the perfumes of the day
seem instantly out of date.
It receives its name because Mademoiselle Chanel
prefers the fifth sample Ernest Beaux presents to her.
According to some, she also chooses the number 5
because of its magical luck-giving qualities.
For the first time,
a perfume is presented in a simple laboratory flacon.
Pure, austere, as bare as a vial,
the minimal lines of the N°5 bottle
distinguishes it from the mannered bottles of the 1920s.
Its sobriety ensures its timelessness.
By some accounts, its stopper, cut like a diamond,
is inspired by the geometry of the place Vendôme.
The original bottle adapts imperceptibly to its time.
N°5 becomes an icon of the 20th century.
In 1959, it is honored by the MOMA of New York.
Andy Warhol depicts it in a series of silkscreens.
For the first time,
at the Liberation of Paris,
GI's flock to the Chanel boutique on the rue Cambon,
lining up to bring bottles of N°5
to wives and fiancées waiting at home.
From the United States to Japan,
the fragrance's fame spreads.
It soon becomes the best-selling perfume in the world.
For the first time,
N°5 pioneers a new form of advertising in the world of fragrance.
In 1937, Mademoiselle Chanel herself is photographed at the Ritz
for Harper's Bazaar.
For the first time,
a fragrance is advertised at the Super Bowl finals.
N°5 enjoys dizzying success.
For the first time,
N°5's place in history is secured
when Marilyn Monroe, at the height of her stardom in 1952,
reveals that she wears to bed just a few drops of N°5...
For the first time,
Jacques Helleu, artistic director of Chanel
between 1965 and 2007,
features celebrities as incarnations of the iconic perfume.
In 1968, Catherine Deneuve agrees to lend her French beauty to N°5,
followed by Candice Bergen,
Suzy Parker, Ali MacGraw, Lauren Hutton,
Carole Bouquet, Estella Warren, Nicole Kidman, Audrey Tautou.
For the first time in the history of N°5,
a man agrees to represent the most feminine of fragrances:
Brad Pitt.
For the first time,
a perfume created in 1921
is still the best-selling and most famous fragrance in the world.
N°5 resists the whims of fashion and the passage of time,
as if Mademoiselle Chanel had found the formula for the feminine eternal.