Coco Avant Chanel

This post is a brief reflection on the movie Coco Avant Chanel, a movie I recently watched about the early life of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. Before watching it, all I knew about Coco Chanel was that she had something to do with perfume and fashion.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I now know that Gabrielle was raised in a French orphanage. She and her sister were performers and part-time seamstresses. In the movie, Gabrielle moved in with a gentleman who grew to love her. She instead fell in love with another young gentleman (although it turns out he was engaged to an Englishwoman).

I could not help being astounded by her blatancy and her biting sarcasm. What with the times, it seemed as if she might be a feminist, however, as her story enfolded I doubted that was her solitary aim. Gabrielle seemed to me more like a woman who wanted the world to leave her alone and let her do what she wanted. I thought of how she and her sister were dropped off at the orphanage by their father and not given any explanation why, how she and her sister made a living doing what they could to survive, and how her sister fell in love with a baron who never married her.

What struck me the most about Gabrielle was that she did not accept what could be changed. It was not necessarily her courage or her rebelliousness that supported her defiance (if one can even call it defiance) - it was her decisiveness and cunning. Gabrielle was not ruthless nor proud nor naïve. She just figured out what she wanted, went, and got it. As simple as that.

I looked up some of her earlier designs and compared them to the Spring-Summer 2014 Haute Couture looks. Although it may be said Chanel's designs are classic, I might go above and beyond and say they are elegant and evoked the same response Gabrielle did: striking, yet effortless.