Henry Giedel - Coco Chanel (2020)

Coco Chanel's name is a concept in the world of fashion. He was probably the first and perhaps the greatest dictator in the world history of fashion. His fringed costumes and "little black dresses", which are considered the pure continuation of elegance and chic, are still worn by millions of women today, the spouses of kings and heirs to the throne as well as ordinary housewives. Chanel revolutionized her profession. It is no wonder, then, that his unusual life, full of both successes and failures, sometimes full of brilliance, sometimes shrouded in shadow, inspired many, including the French Henry Gidel. Gabrielle Chanel, who was brought up in the church orphanage, out of charity, was a real self-made lady and an extraordinary individual. She soon got tired of being the dependent of a rich golden boy and went to Paris to earn her own living. In the early years he worked as a hatter, he only started to deal with clothes during World War I, but then he immediately turned the fashion industry upside down: suffocating corsets, tight plunging skirts, hats the size of millstones decorated with flower gardens and bird's nests, artificiality, from the control of the cicomas. He became a puritan and a Jansenist of fashion, adjusted the cut lines to his own boyish, thin figure, and designed loose, airy, casual clothes. From there, a fantastic career took off: from sixty employees to three thousand, to millions of revenues, to lavish villas and castles, to the famous Chanel perfumes and jewelry, to sensational fashion shows, which attracted audiences from overseas as well, since Chanel - being French - for many he embodied the American dream. However, Coco was not only a brilliant fashion designer, but also an amazing business woman: her tough, uncompromising, endlessly cunning, sarcastic and self-centered personality became as much a concept as her style. He was not as lucky in love as he was in his work. True, he never wanted to get married, and his lovers included an English royal prince and a German diplomat, a famous poet and an even more famous film director. It was part of her Renaissance personality that, as an uneducated and initially uneducated young woman, she patronized the artists of her time as a patron: she supported Stravinsky as a family member for years, buried Gyagilev, and paid for Cocteau's rent and medical treatments out of her own pocket. Between the two world wars, the color and flower of French culture was part of his house, or more precisely, his palace, and he himself did not consider costumes designed for a theater production to be of the same era. Perhaps the greatest virtue of Gidel's monograph is that it is an exciting career novel and the entire 20th century. It can also be read as an authentic contemporary document covering the history of the 19th century.