{"id":52226,"date":"2017-06-26T02:44:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T09:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=52226"},"modified":"2017-06-26T02:44:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T09:44:46","slug":"chanel-no-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/chanel-no-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Chanel No. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"chanel<\/a>You\u2019ve heard that clothes make the man? Meet the suit that made the woman.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gabrielle \u201cCoco\u201d Chanel was born in Samur, France, in 1883. Her life got off to a rocky start. Her mother died shortly after Gabrielle\u2019s birth, and her father took off, abandoning the five Chanel children. Gabrielle was raised in a local Catholic orphanage until she came of age, at which point the nuns found her a job at a local boutique, the House of Grampayre.<\/p>\n

TALENT WILL OUT<\/strong><\/p>\n

The little shop assistant honed her skills as a seamstress, and soon she had a faithful following of customers who came directly to her for alterations. She also worked at a tailor shop once a week. And in addition to her two day jobs, did some moonlighting as a caf\u00e9 and concert singer for a few years. She used to sing one of those sad French songs about a poor girl who lost her little dog, Coco\u2014that\u2019s where her nickname came from.<\/p>\n

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MES AMIS<\/strong><\/p>\n

She did very well in the male companionship department: two of her lovers\u2014a military officer and an English industrialist\u2014bankrolled her first millinery shop in Paris in 1909. It didn\u2019t take her long to establish herself as a leading fashion designer.<\/p>\n

\"Coco_Chanel,_1920\"<\/a>In 1920, Chanel borrowed an idea from Charles Frederick Worth, the founding father of French couture. Worth had created the first woman\u2019s suit with a masculine shirt combo back in 1869, believe it or not. Chanel\u2019s version was made up of a cardigan jacket, skirt, and shirt. At the time, women were starting to join the workforce\u2014and even to drive automobiles. Her designs emphasized clean, flowing lines with plain colors\u2014usually gray, beige, and navy\u2014and fabrics associated with menswear: knit and wool jersey.<\/p>\n

THE SUIT<\/strong><\/p>\n

What made a Chanel suit so remarkable wasn\u2019t simply the boxy design, exquisite fabrics, or the perfect hand-sewing, but the practical details. The suit was designed to be worn loose in the belly to accommodate the average woman\u2019s figure. The slim skirt didn\u2019t pull or crease when a woman moved around. A ribbon was sewn into the waist of the skirt to keep a blouse properly in place, and a side zipper made getting in and out of the skirt more efficient. The hemline was progressive for the time, since it made women\u2019s ankles visible. The collarless jacket, made of light fabric weighted down by a gold chain, resembled a cardigan-style sweater. Both the suit jacket and the skirt featured coordinating trim\u2014typically braided\u2014and lining.<\/p>\n

At the time, the Chanel suit was truly a couture creation, only accessible to the wealthiest of women, who had the funds to go to Paris for up to seven (count \u2019em, seven) fittings. The high price tag didn\u2019t curb the public\u2019s enthusiasm for her designs though.<\/p>\n

The first perfume named for a designer, the ever-classic Chanel No. 5, was introduced in 1923. The late 1920s saw the introduction of classic Chanel designs\u2014the little black dress and the cardigan jacket. In the 1930s Samuel Goldwyn hired her to dress some of his stars. She also developed a line of costume jewelry inspired by the Art Deco movement. Sales and her success continued unabated until WWII and the Nazi occupation of Paris, which cast a pall on the fashion business\u2014among other things.<\/p>\n

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY<\/strong><\/p>\n

An affair with a Nazi officer during the German occupation of France hurt her popularity and sales suffered, but Coco staged a comeback in February 1954. Life<\/em> magazine ran a four-page spread that raved about Chanel\u2019s comfortable style and the following month, a navy blue Chanel suit appeared on the cover of French Vogue. She also appropriated clothing styles worn by men and introduced sports clothes for women including bell bottom pants and pea jackets. Chanel fever had struck once again. In 1969 Katharine Hepburn played her in the Broadway show Coco.<\/p>\n

CHANEL, UPDATED<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Coco Chanel died in 1971, her custom suits were fetching as much as $12,000 (10,000 euros) or about $72,000 today. Several of her assistants assumed command of her design house, but sales stagnated until Karl Lagerfeld stepped in as chief designer in 1983. Lagerfeld catered to a younger clientele, while keeping Chanel\u2019s signature sense of modernity, style, and silhouette intact. In 1991, he successfully paired the Chanel jacket with trendy denim miniskirts. In 2001, he designed his entire fall couture collection without a single skirt; he liberated the jacket as a stand-alone symbol of Chanel style.<\/p>\n

Through decades of hit-or-miss trends, the Chanel suit has stayed the course on the catwalk. At an average of $5,000 (4,000 euros) for a ready-to-wear suit (the vintage pieces can fetch more), the Chanel suit still claims a unique place in the history of fashion.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History (Again)<\/a><\/em>. In it, Uncle John goes back in time to bring fans more compelling, confounding, and fascinating peeks into the world’s past. International in scope, you’ll read about historical events, people, and places worldwide. As always, the slant will be on revealing what they didn’t teach you in history class–history unexpunged!<\/p>\n

Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers\u2019 Institute<\/a> has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom (and everywhere else for that matter). With more than 15 million books in print, the Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader series is the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n

If you like Today I Found Out<\/a>, I guarantee you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books, so check them out<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader You\u2019ve heard that clothes make the man? Meet the suit that made the woman. Gabrielle \u201cCoco\u201d Chanel was born in Samur, France, in 1883. Her life got off to a rocky start. Her mother died shortly after Gabrielle\u2019s birth, and her father took off, abandoning the five Chanel children. Gabrielle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":52227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52229,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52226\/revisions\/52229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}