1959 : Coco Chanel : "Les femmes sont toujours trop habillées" | Archive INA

Sep 16, 2020 | RTF | 06/02/1959 Première interview à la télévision de Mademoiselle Coco CHANEL sur la mode, sa prochaine collection, l'élégance, son don, son style et les imitations. A celle-ci succède une présentation des modèles de la collection 1959 par le mannequin vedette de Chanel, Marie-Hélène ARNAUD, et d'autres mannequins. Phrase finale de Mlle CHANEL dans l'escalier sur la collection présentée : "elle est déjà démodée, elle a une semaine".

BBC Arena: Coco Chanel Unbuttoned

Coco Chanel Exhibition Reveals Fashion Designer Was Part of French Resistance

THE GUARDIAN: Previously unseen documents to go on display at V&A alongside evidence of her collusion with Nazis

New evidence from official records show Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel was a documented member of the French resistance during WW2. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images
A major retrospective of Coco Chanel has unearthed evidence that the fashion designer was a documented member of the French resistance. The previously unseen documents will go on display, along with contradictory evidence that she operated as a Nazi agent.

The documents relating to Chanel’s activities in wartime Paris strike a serious note within what is likely to be the most glamorous exhibition of the year, with more than 50 tweed suits – including a bubblegum pink set belonging to Lauren Bacall – on view at Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto, when it opens at the V&A in London on 16 September.

“We couldn’t do a show about Chanel and not address her wartime record,” said the curator, Oriole Cullen, who has expanded a show first created at the Palais Galliera in Paris in 2020 with a new curation that delves more deeply into Chanel’s links with Britain as well as her wartime activities. » | Jess Cartner-Morley | Saturday, September 9, 2023

The Eight Coco Chanel Creations That Changed How Women Dress

THE TELEGRAPH: She was controversial, but became one of the most successful fashion designers of all time thanks to her revolutionary ideas

Chanel in 1936 | CREDIT: Lipnitzki
One of the most challenging aspects for anyone assessing Coco Chanel’s long, productive life is how slippery its facts are. Coco’s genius for all things aesthetic extended to her own past. She couldn’t resist tidying it up. ‘If only you’d stop lying,’ Boy Capel, the first of her wealthy English lovers, once remonstrated with her. (A bit rich coming from a serial adulterer, but still.)

The work, however, doesn’t lie. Chic, revolutionary, original, liberating and instantly recognisable, so much of what Coco Chanel designed in the 1920s, ’30s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s is still not only relevant, but driving other designers today. Iterations of her bouclé tweed jackets are currently lodged in hundreds of other labels, from high street to haute. Ditto pumps with contrasting coloured tips, extravagant faux-pearl jewels, quilted bags… The list goes on. » | Lisa Armstrong, Head of Fashion | Monday, August 7, 2023

Reputations: Coco Chanel | BBC Documentary

Mar 18, 2019 | This is a documentary about Chanel's life and legacy. @ 35:57, it includes an interview with Karl Lagerfeld about the first appearance of the Chanel suit.

Some sound clips are missing because YouTube automatically strips out copyrighted music/soundtracks and this also strips out narration.

This documentary goes into detail about how Chanel reinvented herself because of a simple misspelling of her name at a childhood convent.

Quintessientially Coco Chanel

1935 Coco Chanel by Man Ray
Very many thanks to Claude Duchamp on Pinterest for this super, iconic photo.

Quintessentially Chanel

Inès de la Fressange: Chanel Ad's 1980s
With many thanks to ana lee on Pinterest for this iconic photo of a Chanel creation.

1959 : Coco Chanel "Les femmes sont toujours trop habillées" | Archive INA

Cinq colonnes à la une | RTF | 06/02/1959 Première interview à la télévision de Mademoiselle Coco CHANEL sur la mode, sa prochaine collection, l'élégance, son don, son style et les imitations. A celle-ci succède une présentation des modèles de la collection 1959 par le mannequin vedette de Chanel, Marie-Hélène ARNAUD, et d'autres mannequins. Phrase finale de Mlle CHANEL dans l'escalier sur la collection présentée : "elle est déjà démodée, elle a une semaine". | Vues sur YouTube : 50,594

Reputations - Coco Chanel

…There are some ”...missing sound clips - YouTube automatically strips out music/soundtracks that has copyright issues also stripping out the narration.” …

Style: Karl Lagerfeld: In His Own Words

A Whiff of Coco Chanel
Photo of Coco Chanel in 1936 courtesy of The Telegraph
THE TELEGRAPH: Coco's time-locked Paris apartment provides Celia Walden with a rare glimpse of the treasures that tell of a life of love and loss

Mademoiselle Chanel is not at home but I am sure that her ghost, severe in a black suit with an angry slash of red lipstick, is present amid a haze of cigarette smoke and her signature No5 scent.

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's private apartment, at 31 rue Cambon, Paris, is a source of wonder that has been preserved exactly as the designer left it when she died in 1971. It is closed to the public but, after months of supplication, the fashion house granted me a rare visit.

The building, bought by Chanel in 1920, still houses the ground-floor shop, the haute couture workrooms in the attic (where 100 seamstresses still work entirely by hand), and what is now Karl Lagerfeld's study. Among the labyrinth of rooms, half-way up the Art Deco stairs that run like a spine through the 18th century building, is the apartment, which Coco called her "nest".

It was in these three small rooms that Coco transformed women's wardrobes. Here, she dreamed up "the new uniform of modern women", as French Vogue christened it (she dispensed with restrictive corsets and fabrics, favouring more relaxed and practical designs), and numerous classics that still enchant today - the little black dresses, two-tone pumps, bouclé suits and quilted shoulder bags.

After Coco died in her sleep at the age of 87, the brand - and rue Cambon - languished until 1983, when Lagerfeld was hired by the Wertheimers (who own Chanel) to rejuvenate it. On the day of my visit, Lagerfeld is tearing around Paris preparing for this week's ready-to-wear shows. But inside Coco's apartment there is a mausoleum-like tranquillity. I am not surprised to hear that Lagerfeld often drops in to seek inspiration. A whiff of Chanel No31 >>>

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)