18.04.

2021 How Coco Chanel changed the course of women's fashion - CNN Style

How Coco Chanel changed the course of women's fashion

Fashion

How Coco Chanel changed the course of

women's fashion
Published 10th January 2021

Credit: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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18.04.2021 How Coco Chanel changed the course of women's fashion - CNN Style

Written by Marianna Cerini

abrielle "Coco" Chanel was one of the 20th century's most influential couturiers. A

G milliner by training, she moved beyond hats to become a rebel and a trailblazer of the
fashion world, creating a new sartorial style that freed women from corsets and lace frills
by offering them sailor shirts and wide-leg pants instead.

"Nothing is more beautiful than freedom of the body," she once said, and her designs lived by these
words: Chanel's silhouettes were fluid and androgynous, her designs loose and -- in the case of her
iconic little black dress, or LBD -- democratic. She wanted women to move and breathe in her
clothes, just like men did in theirs. Her work was, in many ways, a form of female emancipation.

Sunday marks 50 years since Chanel's death, aged 87, though her legacy endures. As well as
revolutionizing how we dress, she helped form a new ideal of what a fashion brand could be: an all-
encompassing force that could tend to all aspects of a woman's life, from formal attire to holiday
wardrobes and evening ones.

Chanel captured her vision in "Coco-isms" that read like acerbic precursors of today's ubiquitous
inspirational quotes -- "a woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future," or "If you're sad, add
more lipstick and attack."

Here are 8 important style innovations from a designer who once famously said: "I don't do fashion.
I am fashion."

Women's trousers
Chanel didn't invent women's pants -- they had already entered wardrobes during World War I,
when women started taking jobs traditionally carried out by men. But she undeniably popularized
them as a fashion garment.

The designer liked wearing pants herself (she often borrowed them from her male lovers), and, as
early as 1918, began sporting flowy "beach pajamas" while vacationing on the French Riviera.
Drawing inspiration from the straight, wide cuts of sailor's pants, giving them a loose, comfortable
shape, she matched them with oversized shirts or sleeveless tops.

The garment considered risqué at the time, due to pajamas' association with the bedroom, but by
the mid-1920s it become a staple among wealthy ladies and a fixture of Chanel's collections.

Nautical tops

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18.04.2021 How Coco Chanel changed the course of women's fashion - CNN Style

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