Chanel's Revolution — The Garment That Freed Women from Their Bindings

At the beginning of the twentieth century, well-to-do women in Europe were still living with their bodies cinched tight. Corsets shaped by whalebone and metal narrowed the torso, and garments adorned with lace and feathers were made less for moving than for being seen. Clothing was a device for displaying its owner’s social standing, and a woman’s body was set within that frame. Into such an age stepped a woman raised in an orphanage, who began to say the very opposite. Clothes, she argued, should be a tool that lets a woman move freely and live freely. Her name was Gabrielle Chanel — the figure the world would come to call ‘Coco’.

The Milliner Who Took Off the Corset

The starting point for ‘Coco Chanel’ was not the dress but the hat. Around 1910 she is said to have opened a hat shop on the Rue Cambon in Paris. Against the large, fruit-and-feather-laden hats then in fashion, what she made were forms that were far plainer and easier to wear. Paring away the excess — this idea, which would run through everything she did, had already put out its first shoots in that small early shop.

Before long her interest moved to clothes. Setting up shops in the resorts of Deauville and Biarritz, the material she fixed her eye on was jersey. Until then it had been used mainly for underwear and men’s sportswear, and was regarded as unsuitable for fine women’s wear — a soft, stretchy knit. With this material she tailored clothes without constriction, clothes that moved along with the body. Garments one could wear, walk, and work in without a corset. They resonated deeply with the mood of an age in which the First World War was pushing women out into workplaces and society.

Her simple, lightly decorated clothes were at first sometimes described as ‘the dress of a poor girl’, so the accounts go. Yet their lightness and ease of movement won over the hearts of wealthy women who longed to escape the suffocation of the corset. Making women beautiful not through opulence but through function and simplicity — Chanel gradually shifted the very measuring stick of fashion’s values.

No.5 and the Little Black Dress

Two symbols are often spoken of as the things that carved Chanel’s name into the world: the perfume ‘No.5’ and the little black dress.

The perfume No.5, launched in 1921, is known as a modern fragrance composed by blending several scent materials rather than tracing the scent of a single flower. Its name — a plain, unadorned number — is also said to have come from its being ‘the fifth trial sample she tested’. The clear, square bottle, too, stood in contrast to the ornate perfume bottles of the day. More than in the fragrance itself, it was in its simple philosophy that this, too, can be called a piece very much in her spirit.

Then in 1926, the American edition of ‘Vogue’ introduced a plain black dress by Chanel’s hand. At the time, black carried a strong impression as the color of mourning and tended to be seen as unsuitable for festive dress. She deliberately brought it into the attire of everyday life and society. The magazine is said to have called the dress ‘the Ford of fashion’, likening it to a mass-produced car — implying a staple anyone could pick up. Competing not in ornament but in the completeness of a single garment anyone could wear — the little black dress is still handed down as a symbol that distilled that philosophy into one piece of clothing.

That said, such tales of ‘symbols’ are held to be mixed with anecdotes and embellishments arranged in later years, and not everything can be taken at face value. Even so, that she stood within the great current of liberation from the corset, and that she presented a new image of womanhood with simplicity as her weapon, remain as sure footprints.

The Light of Revolution, and the Shadow Lingering from Wartime

In the history of fashion, it is widely acknowledged that ‘Coco Chanel’ was one of the figures who greatly changed how women dressed. Liberation from constriction, the celebration of function and simplicity, clothes for women who worked and went out into the world — all of these were inseparably bound to the new image of womanhood in the twentieth century. This is surely the side of light she left behind.

On the other hand, her life carried what are regarded as shadows as well. In particular, her conduct in German-occupied Paris during the Second World War has long been a subject of controversy. That she was on intimate terms with a figure on the German side; that she is said to have moved to gain control over a perfume business in which a Jewish business partner was then involved; and even reports of a view that she had contact with German intelligence. Even among historians, there are various accounts of how far she went, and the assessment cannot be said to be settled.

In this way ‘Chanel’ became a presence that, through a single garment, touched the very body and way of life of women. From an age when clothing was a frame reflecting one’s standing, to an age when clothing became a tool supporting freedom. She stood at the very center of that turning. Around the same time, across the sea in Italy, a craftsman who had watched the lives of other nations’ wealthy up close in a London hotel was about to open a small shop in his native Florence, the memory of saddlery close to his heart. The story of revolution continues, with the stage now changed.