Coco Chanel

For our living histories project, I decided to portrait Coco Chanel and the book I chose is called 'Coco Chanel' , it is written by Ann Gaines and it is part of the series 'Women in the Arts'. 


I don't really understand how the author decided to organize this book, it is as if she just wrote down all the things that came to her mind about Chanel in no specific order. Usually, biographies are organized chronologically, but here, she starts off with Chanel's comeback after her exile and moves on to her death and then back to where she lived when she was small and then back to her fashion show after her exile and then back to her difficult years as a child and how we don't know much about her childhood. 
Nonetheless, the book is well written and has a lot of good information in it. 


One thing I found out that I think it great is that she was very determined and she persevered whenever she set her mind on a goal. One example of this is when she came back from her 15 years self-imposed exile in Switzerland, she presented her new collection in a fashion show where everyone important in fashion was present. This new collection was very coldly received and the reviews were not very encouraging. 
'Reviewers regarded Chanel, then 70 years old, as being as hopelessly outdated as her work. They predicted that none of her plain but expensive little suits would find buyers.'
Nonetheless, Chanel persevered and decided to feature her collection in larger and cheaper stores such as department stores where people would go to find clothes more suitable for everyday wear, which was exactly the type of clothing she was aiming for. The CHANEL name became more famous and even spread to the U.S. where women would pay high prices for Chanel's designs. 
'By the '50s, she had the benefit of distance, and so could truly distill the Chanel look. Time and culture had caught up with her.' -Karl  Lagerfeld, heir to the CHANEL label.