Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [204]
Bettina Ballard wrote:
There was an unorganized revolt building up in women against the whimsy changes of fashion, many of which ridiculed the wearers, and Chanel came along . . . to be the leader of this revolt. The young joined as her followers . . . and now there is a whole new generation aware of the good-taste connotations of the “Chanel Look.” She will certainly go down in history as the only couturier who spanned the taste space of almost half a century without ever changing her basic conception of clothes.16
In 1959, Vogue wrote:
If fashion has taken a turn to the woman, no one can deny that much of the impetus for that turn stems from Coco Chanel—the fierce, wise, wonderful, and completely self-believing Chanel . . . it is not that other Paris collections are like Chanel’s . . . But the heady idea that a woman should be more important than her clothes, and that it takes superb design to keep her looking that way—this idea, which has been for almost forty years the fuel for the Chanel engine, has now permeated the fashion world.17
This acclaim, from one of the most influential fashion magazines in the world, was also a precise rendering of Gabrielle’s mantra: that clothes, rather than dominating a woman, should be the background to her personality. Gabrielle’s comment that “the eccentricity should be in the woman not the dress” had been central to the most austere version of this philosophy, the now-legendary “little black dress.” And while Gabrielle herself was sufficiently characterful that she had always outshone her clothes, they also acted as her “shield.” Her assistant, Lilou Marquand, would say, “Maybe that was Mademoiselle’s genius: her clothes were a protection. In my suit, I was certain to look my best. No more worrying about one’s appearance, image, and line: I could think of something else. Living in Chanel gave a safety which, for Mademoiselle, was worth all the holidays in the world.”18
Although Gabrielle vehemently denied the criticism sometimes now leveled, that her collections didn’t change, her suit, in particular, was endlessly refined and had become unfailingly recognizable as “a Chanel.” While this description irritated Gabrielle, she did indeed repeat a formula with different materials, and surrounded the changes with the details—the buttons, the braids, the linings. But this was the point: wearing a Chanel suit, one had no need to worry about one’s appearance. It has been said many times before that these suits were a kind of uniform. But as with a uniform, where everyone apparently looks the same, as Gabrielle said of her “black Ford” dresses, in such clothing, the individuality of the wearer is brought out rather than submerged.
By the late fifties, Gabrielle had created all her signature elements: the little black dresses; the smart trousers; the costume jewelry; the slingback shoes with contrasting toe caps; the pert hats; the delicate lace evening dresses; the comfortable yet elegant jersey dresses; the suits of bouclé or the Prince of Wales check with their distinctive Chanel buttons, all with chains to ensure the jackets sat well, the linings often matching the accompanying blouse; the 1955 quilted leather or jersey bags with those gilt chain shoulder straps and now the big bows gathering up Gabrielle’s models’ short bouffant hair. And no matter what may have been said about how