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This book is dedicated to recognize the life, work and legacy of some of the greatest fashion designers of the history and how they have changed the industry.
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CONTENT 07 Gabrielle Coco Chanel 08 Her World 10 Legacy 12 Runway
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Alexander McQueen
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Dolce & Gabbana
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Karl Lagerfeld
17 His World 20 Legacy 22 Runway
27 Their World 28 Legacy 30 Runway
35 Hir World 38 Legacy 40 Runway
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Gabrielle Coco Chanel
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Gabrielle Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel was a leading French modernist designer, whose patterns of simplicity and style revolutionised women’s clothing. She was the only designer to be listed in the Time 100 most influential people of the Twentieth Century. Designer Coco Chanel was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel in 1883, although she would later claim that her real date of birth was 1893, making her ten years younger. Her place of birth was also something that she sought to disguise. Coco was born in the workhouse in the Loire Valley where her unmarried mother worked, although she asserted that she was born in Auvergne. She was raised by nuns who taught her how to sew—a skill that would lead to her life’s work. Her nickname came from another occupation entirely. During her brief career as a singer, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called “Coco.”
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” -Coco Chanel 8 Fashion Legacy
HER WORLD
During the 1920s, Coco Chanel became the first designer to create loose women’s jerseys, traditionally used for men’s underwear, creating a relaxed style for women ignoring the stiff corseted look of the time. They soon became very popular with clients, a post-war generation of women for whom the corseted restricted clothing seemed old-fashioned and impractical.
She herself became a much revered style icon known for her simple yet sophisticated outfits paired with great accessories, such as several strands of pearls. As Chanel once said,“luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.” She died on January 10, 1971.
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Gabrielle Coco Chanel
“In 1919 I woke up famous. I’d never guessed it. If I’d known I was famous, I’d have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb.” Coco Chanel
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LEGACY
Opening her first shop on Paris’s Rue Cambon in 1910, Chanel started out selling hats. She later added stores in Deauville and Biarritz and began making clothes. Her first taste of clothing success came from a dress she fashioned out of an old jersey on a chilly day. In response to the many people who asked about where she got the dress, she offered to make one for them. “My fortune is built on that old jersey that I’d put on because it was cold in Deauville,” she once told author Paul Morand.
“It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion. . . that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure” In the 1920s, Chanel took her thriving business to new heights. She launched her first perfume, Chanel No. 5, which was the first to feature a designer’s name. Perfume “is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion. . . . that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure,” Chanel once explained. The fragrance was in fact also backed by department store owner Théophile Bader and businessmen Pierre and Paul Wertheimer, with Chanel developing a close friendship with Pierre. A deal was ultimately negotiated where the Wertheimer business would take in 70 percent of Chanel No. 5 profits for producing the perfume at their factories, with Bader receiving 20 percent and Chanel herself only receiving 10 percent. Over the years, with No. 5 being a massive source of revenue, she repeatedly sued to have the terms of the deal renegotiated.
In 1925, she introduced the now legendary Chanel suit with collarless jacket and well-fitted skirt. Her designs were revolutionary for the time—borrowing elements of men’s wear and emphasizing comfort over the constraints of then-popular fashions. She helped women say goodbye to the days of corsets and other confining garments. Another 1920s revolutionary design was Chanel’s little black dress. She took a color once associated with mourning and showed just how chic it could be for evening wear. In addition to fashion, Chanel was a popular figure in Parisian literary and artistic worlds. She designed costumes for the Ballets Russes and Jean Cocteau’s play Orphée, and counted Cocteau and artist Pablo Picasso among her friends. For a time, Chanel had a relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky. Coco Chanel died on January 10, 1971, at her apartment in the Hotel Ritz.Hundreds crowded together at the Church of the Madeleine to bid farewell to the fashion icon. In tribute, many of the mourners wore Chanel suits. A little more than a decade after her death, designer Karl Lagerfeld took the reins at her company to continue the Chanel legacy. Today her namesake company is held privately by the Wertheimer family and continues to thrive, believed to generate hundreds of millions in sales each year. In addition to the longevity of her designs, Chanel’s life story continues to captivate people’s attention.
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Gabrielle Coco Chanel
RUNWAY
From the debut of the first ready-towear collection in 1978, Chanel can always be counted on for one of the most major runway spectacles of the season. Here, the runway evolution of the fashion house that has helped transform Paris Fashion Week, with the help of Karl Lagerfeld, from the ‘70s through today.
“Succes is often achieve by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable” -Coco Chanel
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Gabrielle Coco Chanel 1 From her use of monochrome to her oversized ‘costume’ pearls and cuffs, everything is still sublimely, continuously referenced. As she herself once said:
“Fashion fades, only style remains the same.”
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“In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different”
-Coco Chanel 1. Spring 2003 2. Spring 2014 3. Resort 2009 4. Fall 2007 14 Fashion Legacy
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5. The Feminist Rally Spring 2015
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Alexander McQueen
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His WORLD
Alexander McQueen was born on March 17, 1969, in Lewisham, London. He became head designer of the Louis Vuitton-owned Givenchy fashion line and, in 2004, launched his own menswear line. He earned the British Fashion Council’s British Designer of the Year award four times, and was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. McQueen committed suicide in 2010, shortly after the death of his mother. Fashion designer. Lee Alexander McQueen was born on March 17, 1969 into a working-class family living in public housing in London’s Lewisham district. McQueen, called “Lee” by his friends for most of his life, recognized his homosexuality at an early age and was teased extensively about it by schoolmates. At age 16, McQueen dropped out of school. He found work on Savile Row, a street in London’s Mayfair district famous for offering made-to-order men’s suits. He worked first with the tailor shop Anderson and Shephard, and then moved to nearby Gieves and Hawkes.
“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules, but to keep the tradition”. -Alexander McQueen
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Alexander McQueen
McQueen decided to further his clothes-making career, and moved on from Savile Row. McQueen began working with theatrical costume designers Angels and Bermans. The dramatic style of the clothing he made there would become a signature of his later independent design work. McQueen then left London for a short stint in Milan, where he worked as a design assistant to Italian fashion designer Romeo Gigli. Upon his return to London, he enrolled at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, and received his M.A. in fashion design in 1992.
Soon after obtaining his degree, Alexander McQueen started his own business designing clothes for women. He met enormous success with the introduction of his “bumster” pants, so named because of their extremely low-cut waistline. Only four years out of design school, McQueen was named Chief Designer of Louis Vuitton-owned Givenchy, a French haute couture fashion house.
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His WORLD In 2000, Gucci bought a 51 percent stake in Alexander McQueen’s private company, and provided the capital for McQueen to expand his business. McQueen left Givenchy shortly thereafter. In 2003, McQueen was declared International Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and A Most Excellent Commander of the British Empire by the Queen of England, and won yet another British Designer of the Year honor. Meanwhile, McQueen opened stores in New York, Milan, London, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
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Alexander McQueen
Kate Moss hologram for Alexander McQueen Fashion Week 2006
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LEGACY “I wwwwade and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.”
As a designer, Lee Alexander McQueen sought to imbue garments with a visceral, emotional intensity through merging the personal with the political, the organic with the modern, and the rigours of traditional tailoring techniques with the lightness of haute couture. As such, the world of Alexander McQueen is one defined by how the elements of fragility and strength, tradition and technology, severity and grace, contrast and complement each other to create a new vision for fashion in the 21st century. Savage Beauty is a showcase of the key themes and concepts that inspired and informed Alexander McQueen throughout his career: Romanticism, the Gothic, history, nature, anatomy, and the interplay between each in his search for the sublime. “When you see a woman wearing McQueen there’s a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful it kind of fends people off”
Over the course of a 20-year career, McQueen received a number of awards, and in 2003, was appointed a Commander of the British Empire by the Queen. His imagination and unique approach to design have left an indelible imprint on the fashion world, and a legacy that continues to this day.
At the moment in London, the ghost of Lee Alexander McQueen is everywhere you turn. His name is stamped on posters on the underground; his clothes are in the halls of the V&A; his life and loves are detailed in salacious tell-alls that had publishers issuing apologies before they were even released. His is a presence that is impossible to escape. After Lee McQueen’s death, the appointment of Sarah Burton (previously Head of Womenswear) as the brand’s creative director was one that has honoured these codes – but while the light of McQueen has stayed aflame, Burton has done more than carry the torch. Fashion designer Alexander McQueen spent a relatively short time in the spotlight — he was only 40 when he ended his own life Feb. 11, 2010 — and yet he continues to influence his field. He was named British Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council four times during his 18 years as a designer. Fashion insiders say he changed the way clothes were worn and created as well as the way they were presented. McQueen consistently found inspiration in unusual places, one collection was called “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims.” Another was inspired by the Salem witch trials. He presented theatrical designs that featured unconventional materials such as shells, animal horns and human hair.
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Alexander McQueen
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RUNWAY
His runway shows were over the top, sometimes breathtaking. In one show, his models worked a raised catwalk puddled with black ink while being showered by golden rain. In another, the models were suspended from ropes over a spiked runway during the finale.
“I’m about what goes through people’s minds, the stuff that people don’t want to admit or face up to. The shows are abput what’s buried in people’s psyches” - McQueen
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Alexander McQueen Perplexing, disturbing, unearthly, revolting… Alexander McQueen’s designs are nothing if not controversial. The result of a brilliant yet tortured mind, which sadly resulted in his tragic suicide in February 2010, McQueen left behind a fascinating body of work from a career that spanned more than two decades. This British designer’s collections continue to be questioned, picked apart, and analyzed in desperate attempts to better understand and fully appreciate his untamed imagination.
He is therefore one of only a handful of designers who can claim to have truly revolutionized the industry. Alexander McQueen’s legacy is, quite simply, extraordinary.
“I think there is beauty in everything. What “normal” people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it”. -Alexander McQueen
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RUNWAY
“The world needs fantasy, not reality” - Alexander McQueen
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Dolce & Gabbana
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Their WORLD Founders and fashion designers for Dolce & Gabbana, 1985. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana rose from obscurity to form a partnership that would have them becoming two of the best known designers Dolce was born in Polizzi Generosa, a small village near Palermo, Sicily on August 13, 1958. He grew up in fashion, since his father was a tailor. He has always credited this with the reason fashion became his medium of choice for expressing himself, something he felt a deep desire to do from an early age. He studied fashion when he was young and worked in his family’s small clothing factory as he was growing up. Gabbana, on the other hand, was born in Milan, Italy, on November 14, 1962. Gabbana, unlike his future partner, had never thought about fashion as a child. He grew up away from it and it was not until he was about 15 years old that he became interested in fashion in general for himself, particularly such designers as Fiorucci. Instead, Gabbana studied graphic design at the university because he wanted to go into advertising. He worked in that field for a short time after graduation before he quit, realizing that his heart just was not in it. It was at that time that he turned to fashion. The pair met in 1980 when they were both assistants at an atelier in Milan. They started their partnership in 1982, although they still did freelance designing for other companies until they had officially started their own company.
“Dreams can still come true; you need a great deal of energy and determination, and a little bit of luck� - Stefano Gabbana
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Dolce & Gabbana
“No matter how old you are, you never stop dreaming, so why would you when it comes to clothes?� -Dolce & Gabbana
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Legacy When we design it’s like a movie. We think of a story and we design the clothes to go with it” -Dolce & Gabbana
Dolce & Gabbana style is a mix of traditionally male and female clothing, as they are known to say that fashion and dressing have nothing to do with being straight or gay, but rather that everyone has a part of the opposite sex inside them and that everyone needs to get in touch with that opposite side of their gender to be whole. They point out that it is only modern fashion that has made men and women so different dress-wise. The first collection from the design duo was shown in October 1985 alongside five other new Italian labels as a part of Milan Fashion Week. Their 1990 Spring/Summer women’s collection referenced the mythological painting of Raphael, and the duo began to build a reputation for crystal-encrusted clothing. The 1991 Fall/Winter women’s collection was also adorned by trinkets, including filigree medals and embellished corsets. The 1992 Fall/Winter women’s collection was then inspired by the silver screen of the 1950s, though the collection still included crystal embellished body suits.
They have dressed women like Madonna and Nicole Kidman and men like Tom Cruise. People vie to wear their clothing at public events and to revel in the attention such clothing affords them. According to the Dolce & Gabbana website, their clothes are for a certain type of woman:
“The Dolce & Gabbana woman is strong: she likes herself and knows she is liked. A cosmopolitan woman who has toured the world but who doesn’t forget her roots.”
They launched the D&G men’s collection in January of 1994 and the D&G women’s collection in March of that same year. (D&G is their less expensive line of clothing.) The designer duo is renowned for their ability to express the beauty of the female body in a very artistic and sensual manner which in return, inflated “Dolce & Gabbana” net worth. Their creations are considered to be highly unconventional and experts credit the pair with the achievement of completely resetting the parameters of fashion designing. Some of their most iconic creations include the “underwear-as-outerwear” and “gangster boss pinstripe suit” collections. In 1995 the book 10 Years of Dolce and Gabbana was published. The book, which commemorated the first decade of the designers’ fashions in photographs had an introduction by Isabella Rossellini, the Italian actress who has been wearing their clothes almost since the pair started designing them. In 2004 Dolce and Gabbana opened their first stand-alone store anywhere in the world on Bond Street in London, England, the D&G emporium, which stocked the duos less-expensive designer collection. Not everyone was excited about the fact, though, just as not everyone was a fan of the duo’s styles. few years down the line they decided to commit to each other from a long term perspective. However, the relationship suffered a jolt in 2005 when the couple split up owing to their mutual differences. However, the designer duo has managed to keep their excellent working relationship intact even though it has been curtains for them on the personal front for the past five years.
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Their first fashion show were at their apartment with their friendsd as models The unconventional approach stirred enough buzz to land them a spot in Milan’s 1984 fashion week.” They made their real world debut at the “New Talent” fashion shows at the Milan collections in October of 1985. They received such acclaim that they launched the Dolce & Gabbana women’s collection the very next year, in March of 1986. Not long after, in 1989 they opened their first boutique in Japan.
“Style is personality. It’s the ability to look at things beyond fashion a nd the self- confidence to transform even the simplest t hing into something special”. - Dolce & Gabbana
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Dolce & Gabbana They launched Dolce & Gabbana women’s collection, 1986; launched beachwear line, 1988; launched lingerie line. 2,000 July opening at the Dolce&Gabbana store in Florence. During the Dolce&Gabbana Womenswear Fashion Show F/W 2011/ 2012 a Wi-fi network was available inside Metropolo theatre, and for the first time ever guest were able to log on to a customised web page where they could post their comments live during the show.
One of D&G’s few strengths is that they know who they’re appealing to and play on that.” Although not all felt that way.
“Too much intelectuallism is too boring; too much sexuality is too vulgar. The good balance makes people interested.” -Domenico Dolce
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Karl Lagerfeld
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HIS WORLD
One of the most acclaimed fashion designers in the world, Karl Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg, Germany. Fashion designer. Born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt in Hamburg, Germany. While the famous fashion designer has never revealed the exact date of his birth, it’s believed he was born on September 10, 1923. From an early age, Lagerfeld expressed an interest in design and fashion, but it wasn’t until his teen years, after his family had returned to Hamburg, that Lagerfeld immersed himself in the world of high fashion. As a fashion designer, photographer, publisher, designer, and also film director, Karl Lagerfeld has created a universe in which every line is perfectly under control, each detail of absolute importance. The Cartesian mind has hatched a caustic, ultramodern, highly structured style, with an allure and a manner that emerges through graphic symbols that have become his unequivical hallmarks. His style delves deep into his cosmopolitan background and into his perfect mastery of languages, which he acquired in Hamburg.
“I don’t like standar beauty. There is no beauty without strangeness” -Karl Lagerfeld
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Karl Lagerfeld
As soon as he had finished his studies in Paris, he entered the world of fashion still a very young man, and in 1954 he won the Woolmark Prize. The coat he created for the occasion, which won over the jury, was made by Pierre Balmain, who recognized that the young graduate’s talent and took him on as his new assitant. Three years later, Karl Lagerfeld was appoined artistic director of the Maison Jean Patou.
His ability to capture, anticipate and interpret tomorrow’s trend always fascinates. Just when ready- to- wear fashions were taking shape, he embarked on a career as a freelance fashion designer in France, Italy, Britany and Germnay. In Paris he left his marks on Chloé. In Rome he worked to give a new look to Fendi furs. His joint venture with the italian fashion house started in 1965 and, over the years, extended to all the label’s ready-to-wear collections, and it is still going today.
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HIS WORLD A chameleon of style, Karl Lagerfeld has beverthless refined stylistic features of his own, which he works into his own eponymous line, which has been going since 1984. One year earlier, he had been called in to give new life to Chanel: he gradually shook uo its stylistic elements, rejuvenated its image, and introduced a breathof fresh air that allowed the brand to reassert its supremacy in the world of luxury and fashion.
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“Elegance is a physical quality. If a woman doesn’t have it naked, she’ll never have it clothed.” -Karl Lagerfeld
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Legacy “Work is not only a need to make a living, is also a need to express yourself”. -Karl Lagerfeld
Karl Lagerfeld put his name to the Chloé collections from 1992 to 1997 and opened up a new chapter in his own name, launching the Lagerfel Gallery in 1998 (the maison again adopted the name of its founder in 2006: Karl Lagerfeld). Always in tine with the world around him, he was the first to agree to take on the mass market, designing thrity models for H&M. This experience led to a new idea- a “new beginning”which he started working on in 2010, announcing a collection for 2011 based on a new concept: mass- market ready- to- wear garments steeped in the luxury and quality of which the Lagerfeld’s style is a symbol:
“mass elitism, which has long been my dream (...), it’s the future of modernity”. “What I really like is what I’ve never done before”, says Karl Lagerfeld. Since he can never be content with the countless seccesses he has achieved in his fashion career, he has opened out his range of expression; creating opera costumes, revamping the Coca Cola Light bottle, and giving a new look to Medicom Toy’s Bearbrick and Steiff plush toys. In 1999 came the opening of his 7L bookshop and, the following year, his Editions 7L publishing company. In 1975 he wrote a new page of artistic expression with the Chloé perfume. His catalogue of olfactory sensations was later enhanced with Lagerfeld pour Homme (1978), Jako (1998), and Kapsule (2008), as well as Photo, in 1991, an insolent citrusy fragance that appears to gesture towards Lagerfeld, who by the had been behind the
Lagerfeld has himself shot all the advertising campaigns for the brands he has worked for as a designer. Under his directions, Claudia Schiffer Vanessa Paradis, Diana Kruger and Lilly Allen, as well as led tops Freja Beha, Coco Rocha have revealed a different face and played new roles. As well as for his sense of style and allure, Karl Lagerfeld is also in great demand for his sense of image and for the visual identity that so forcefully emerges from his printed works on paper. Wheter he is photographing for advertising or fashion magazines, for an exhibition at Art Basel, at the Maiosn Européene de la Photographie, at the palace of Versailles, in Tokyo or New York, or even in Berlin, his style is always instantly recognizable. With this taste for photography and this sense of stage direction, Karl Lagerfeld could not fail to be turned to as director for the silver screen. The results of this new form of applied art- his shot movies: Remember Now, Vol de Jour, Shopping Fever and his latest, La Lettre- all reveal a certain idea of Lagerfeld’s aesthetic vision. A new facet of the fashion designer, and certainly a prelude to future projects.
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Karl Lagerfeld
RUNWAY
In 1982, the chairman of Chanel, Alain Wertheimer, asked Lagerfeld to design for the house. The designer would go on to redefine the house’s codes, equally paying homage to the house’s legendary founder and subverting her ideals with his modern takes on her most emblematic designs.
“Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time”. -Karl Lagerfeld
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Karl Lagerfeld In recent years Lagerfeld conceived of Chanel’s métiers d’ art, runway shows designed to highlight the craftmanship of houses such as Desrues, Lessage and Barrie Knitwear, now owned under Chanel’s Parrafection umbrella.
Lagerfeld’s skill and ability to design clothes women covet has driven Chanel’s astounding resurrection, and supports its ability to maintain its place at the very apex of the luxury industry. He lives in Paris with his cat Choupette.
“My thing is to work more than the others to show them how useless they are.” -Karl Lagerfeld
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Fendi Fall 2014 Runway Show/Milan
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