Chanel, Gabrielle

Part I of Essay
Gabrielle Chanel, orphaned at an early age, was raised by nuns. Gabrielle wanted to be a singer. She debuted in a concert cafe. Each of the two songs Gabrielle sang contained the word Coco. The name, which was given to her by the audience, stuck for more than eighty years. ....

Part II of Essay
.... Chanel once did. The way, 75 years ago, she mixed up the vocabulary of male and female clothes and created fashion that offered the wearer a feeling of hidden luxury rather than ostentation are just two examples of how her taste and sense of style overlap with today's fashion. Chanel would not have defined herself as a feminist--in fact, she consistently spoke of femininity rather than of feminism--yet her work is unquestionably part of the liberation of women. She threw out a life jacket, as it were, to women not once but twice, during two ....