Coco Chanel: a Fashion Icon Legacy
Coco Chanel: A Fashion Icon Legacy
Thinking of fashion, many names come into mind: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent, but the one that sticks out over all of these seems to constantly be Chanel. Chanel’s story is most inspiring due to her journey; she was not born into the glamour life. Chanel had to work for success, coming up from impoverishment, not even bringing a family with her out of it. She was to be the name on the company, the one that will be admired and noted for the work she did and the obstacles she overcame. Coco Chanel’s hardships not only shaped her future and designs, but they revolutionized fashion and created an iconic image and company that will not be forgotten.
Stricken with an impoverished childhood and left abandoned, an orphanage is not the anticipated place that would foster a revolutionary. Ashamed to tell her story, she “obscured her past from others, reshaping its heartaches, smoothing the rough edge . . . [but] she could not keep all the details hidden” (Picardie 14). In a poorhouse in Saumur, France, Gabrielle Chanel was born the second of five children on August 19, 1883 (Dow and Joce). At six years old, her mother, Jeanne Devolle, passed away, which left the family with their father who had a job as a peddler, and was never fully reliable to take care of his children. Albert Chanel ran away and left his children to the orphanage, raised by nuns-the Sisters of Providence (Picardie 14). One of the hospital nuns where she was born “was [named] Gabrielle Bonheur, according to Chanel, ‘so [she] was baptized Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel’” (Picardie 16). Picardie then explains that she knew nothing of this, because she was never occasioned to check her birth certificate. She spent seven years ministered by these nuns, “slept in the unheated dormitory and sat at the table with the other destitute children who had no family to pay the tuition” (Dow and Joce). Gabrielle and her sisters lived
Thinking of fashion, many names come into mind: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent, but the one that sticks out over all of these seems to constantly be Chanel. Chanel’s story is most inspiring due to her journey; she was not born into the glamour life. Chanel had to work for success, coming up from impoverishment, not even bringing a family with her out of it. She was to be the name on the company, the one that will be admired and noted for the work she did and the obstacles she overcame. Coco Chanel’s hardships not only shaped her future and designs, but they revolutionized fashion and created an iconic image and company that will not be forgotten.
Stricken with an impoverished childhood and left abandoned, an orphanage is not the anticipated place that would foster a revolutionary. Ashamed to tell her story, she “obscured her past from others, reshaping its heartaches, smoothing the rough edge . . . [but] she could not keep all the details hidden” (Picardie 14). In a poorhouse in Saumur, France, Gabrielle Chanel was born the second of five children on August 19, 1883 (Dow and Joce). At six years old, her mother, Jeanne Devolle, passed away, which left the family with their father who had a job as a peddler, and was never fully reliable to take care of his children. Albert Chanel ran away and left his children to the orphanage, raised by nuns-the Sisters of Providence (Picardie 14). One of the hospital nuns where she was born “was [named] Gabrielle Bonheur, according to Chanel, ‘so [she] was baptized Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel’” (Picardie 16). Picardie then explains that she knew nothing of this, because she was never occasioned to check her birth certificate. She spent seven years ministered by these nuns, “slept in the unheated dormitory and sat at the table with the other destitute children who had no family to pay the tuition” (Dow and Joce). Gabrielle and her sisters lived