Breaking Boundaries

In the 1900’s fashion was as much about sexualisation as it was about clothes, women were to dress to cohere to social norms and standards. Similarly, you were to dress in alignment to your social class, people from a lower class would wear duller, older clothing whereas higher class people would wear brighter more structured pieces. With all the main fashion designers being male, women’s clothing was ruled by men. Floor length balloon skirts and tight corsets meant that women found difficulty in the simplest of tasks. Coco made it her aim to defy these conventions. Initially, Coco took it upon herself to dress in male attire during horseback riding, pairing it with her own handmade hat. Her choice shocked bystanders but the act was also admirable, it gained both respect and distaste from females as some found it empowering and others found it distasteful. Coco began developing her own designs from this day onwards. With help from one of her male conquests in 1910, aged just 21, Coco opened her first hat store at 31 Rue Cambon. Even her design of hats reflected her simplicity and elegance, this allowed women to be stylish and practical at the same time, defying societal norms of voluptuous heavy hats. Coco’s general distaste to the trends at the time was prevalent and carried through in her work as she juxtaposed the designers around her with her creativity.

..“Nothing makes a woman look older than obvious expensiveness, ornateness and complication.”- Coco Chanel, 20th Century. Chanel delved into the world of designing clothes when she happened to make herself a dress out of an old jersey on a winter’s day. Many asked where the garment was from and Coco offered to recreate the piece for them. From this Coco went on to open a further two stores and sell clothing.