Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman who founded the Chanel fashion house. Her designs helped popularize modern women’s clothing, including streamlined suits and the little black dress.

Chanel suit: A women's suit characterized by a collarless jacket, braid trim, and a coordinated skirt. Its flexible construction and polished simplicity became a signature of Chanel's approach to women's tailoring.
Saumur: A town in western France where Coco Chanel was born in 1883. Chanel's early life began in this town before her family moved elsewhere.
Ernest Beaux: A French-Russian perfumer who created Chanel No. 5 for the House of Chanel. Beaux translated Chanel's brief for a new perfume into its celebrated fragrance.
Sportswear: Clothing designed for physical activity that also influenced casual everyday dress. Chanel adapted practical garments and fabrics into fashionable clothing for women.
Elsa Schiaparelli: An Italian fashion designer known for surrealist collaborations and inventive, theatrical clothing. Schiaparelli's visual wit and embellishment contrasted with Chanel's preference for understated elegance.
Little black dress: A simple black dress designed for versatile use across occasions. Chanel helped establish the little black dress as a modern wardrobe staple.
Aubazine Abbey: A former Cistercian abbey in central France that housed an orphanage where Chanel spent part of her childhood. The austere setting of Chanel's adolescence is often connected to motifs in her later designs.
Karl Lagerfeld: A German fashion designer who served as creative director of Chanel from 1983 until 2019. Lagerfeld revived and reinterpreted the house's codes after its founder's death.
Flapper: A young woman associated with the 1920s who embraced shorter skirts, bobbed hair, and social independence. Chanel's modern clothes became associated with the changing image of women in the 1920s.
Madeleine Vionnet: A French fashion designer celebrated for bias-cut garments that draped closely around the body. Vionnet and Chanel offered distinct ways to achieve modernity without the rigid corseted silhouette.

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