Malvika’s Ramblings

If you want to buy Chanel, you can just drop in at the exclusive Chanel packed away in the Imperial Hotel, New Delhi amidst marbled splendour. Parisian models were flown in and the lawns at the hotel were redesigned in October 2005 to announce Chanel discreetly to India.
Its been about a year since Luxury brands like LVMH and Chanel arrived in the developing nations. However, the brand makes sure that the snobbery sewn into the seam lines of Chanel remains intact. Coco Chanel, the founder of the house of Chanel, spent enough time being looked down upon by French mistresses and socialites. She made sure through a series of alliances, strategic love affairs and astute business sense to reach that level in the social ladder where she could do the looking down at. Pampered with furs and jewels and Rolls Royces, she created and enjoyed luxury.
However it had not always been so for her. She was brought up in the austere land of Auverge in France and had been a child of poverty and infidelity. Her mother was frail and sickly and her father a philanderer. She was a tough, fierce little girl who grew up into a relentless flirt. While she was involved in romantic liaisons with different men, each more successful and rich than the other, she enjoyed her independence and freedom. She often got attached to the men and on losing them, would find respite in work.
In an age where women wore frothy dresses and gravity defying hairdos, Chanel felt tiny, flat chested and an outcast. She made public appearances with her boyfriend ‘Boy’ Capel to overhear remarks like ’severe’ and ’spare’ about herself.

Indignation and vanity and perhaps, a hint of eccentricity, inspired her towards making daring moves like donning on elegant pyjamas and pants in the French Page 3 society. Pragmatism and logic were the cornerstones of her design; Androgyny wasn’t, she insisted. She knew that falling trees must be heard and she publicised her designs aggressively by asking celebrities to wear them to casual dinners where they would surely be followed by the paparazzi. She sought well chiselled lades who exuded inherent style and a superior attitude. Chanel was as much a brand builder as a designer!
She created the Chanel classics – No.5 which has been the largest selling perfume in the world since 1929, the lil’ black dress which is a simple design that took a daring designer to introduce to the world, the string of fake pearls and tweed jackets with sharp contours and skinny sleeves.
After an age of flounces and frills where women were corseted partridges, Chanel brought in a sense of minimalist style. She said of the fruit and feather laden hats that women wore, “How can the brain function in those things?” When the Duke of Westminster presented rare diamonds and emeralds, matching bracelets of rubies, brilliant sapphires, she preferred to put on her string of pearls saying, “It is disgusting to wander loaded down with millions around the neck just because one happens to be rich.”
She could never reconcile herself with Christian Dior’s designs. He was the next big fashion guru after her and got famous for re-introducing feminity with his waspies - the silhouettes with a tiny waist and large skirts. So Chanel is not just a fashion house but also a fashion religion with her own set of rules and ethics. Do you subscribe?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 4:23 am and is filed under Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.