Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883 – 1971) Figure 1. Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel [pic] Gabrielle Chanel (see Figure 1) was born in a French city Saumur on 19 August in 1883. When she was 18 she got a job as a shop assistant at a clothes shop. In 1909 Coco opened her own firm that made hats, which had a huge success in Paris. Coco had a talent to invent new models.
Gabrielle Chanel commonly known as Coco Chanel started out in a life of poverty. It was at the orphanage in which she was raised that she learned to sew, leading her to find a local job as a seamstress. However, life as a seamstress lacked the glamour she desired, causing her to pursue a career in theater. But when show business proved fruitless, she found solace in the company of her lover Etienne Balsan, heir to a textile fortune. Balsan provided the capital needed for Coco to start up the hat and dress shop which quickly became one of the most popular boutiques in Paris.
At birth Chanel’s name was entered into the official registry as “Chasnel.” It is speculated that this spelling was a clerical error or an ancient spelling of the family name. [3] The couple eventually had five other children: Julia-Berthe, (1882–1913), Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was twelve years old, Chanel’s mother died of tuberculosis. Her father sent her two brothers out as farm laborers and the three daughters to a bleak area of central France, the Corrèze, into the hands of a convent for orphans, Aubazine. [4] It was a stark, frugal life demanding strict discipline but raised with the charity of the Catholic faith.
Twiggy’s influence on fashion and modeling is still present in the world today through her involvement in television shows, magazines, and product commercials; as well as the influence she has had on women’s fashion today between keeping older women fashion forward and designing clothing for all women, and her attempt to fight against the negative side effects that comes with a world full of super models. This fashion icon is a woman who caught the eye of the public in sixty-six and still to this day people are watching her. Twiggy was born in London at the end of the 1940s as Lesley Hornby. From childhood she always had dreamed of being in fashion and at the age of sixteen was pulled into the world of fashion and started her path to being a fashion icon. Twiggy revolutionized the world of fashion and modeling through her tiny figure, boyish features, short haircut, thick eyelashes, and new style clothing in a matter of four years.
Coco Chanel By Sara Templeton Not just a designer, not just big name, Coco Chanel was an icon in the fashion industry - she was passionate about clothing design and a trendsetter whose influence can still be seen today. The French fashion guru is charged with opening up the world of haute couture - high fashion. But more than any of these accomplishments, Coco Chanel was a true leader, one who other women could look up to in times of inequality. She was a role model for an industrially expanding world. It was Chanel who saw past the corset and replaced it with comfortable, sexier clothing.
Johnson took many dance classes, which inspired her love of costumes. Johnson's fashion career started after she entered and won the Mademoiselle Guest Editor Contest. Within a year, she was the in-house designer for Manhattan boutique Paraphernalia. Johnson became part of both the ‘youthquake’ fashion movement and Andy Warhol's underground scene. In 1969, she opened a boutique called Betsey Bunky Nini on New York's Upper East Side.
SWOTT Analysis Donna Karan started her fashion career at a young age working with Liz Clairborne, then as an assistant designer with the well-known fashion house of Anne Klein. Donna was born with her mother as a showroom model, and her father was a practicing suit maker/ tailor, so it seems inevitable that she would be part of the fashion industry. While attending the prestigious Parson’s school of design in 1968, Donna Karan was offered a summer job working for the designer, Anne Klein. While at Klein, she met and married her second husband, a clothing boutique owner, Mark Karan. At the age of 24, after graduating from Parsons, Kline offered her a full time position as one of its designer; then two years later she was promoted to associate designer, and had become Klein's successor.
She also no longer referred to him as Curtius, she called him “uncle.” A couple of years later, Curtius moved to Paris to start working on setting up a wax exhibition. Later that year, Tussaud and her mother joined Curtius and also moved to Paris. Only being ten years old, Curtius saw the talent in Tussaund and asked her to help him create a waxwork of Louis XV’s last mistress, Madame Du Barry, a cast of which is the oldest work currently on display. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1772, and attracted a big crowd. The wax figure of Madame Du Barry was displayed and everyone was surprised by the artwork.
In the middle of Satrapi’s book, she said, “I never realized how much they loved me. And I understand how important they were to me” (149:7). Family played a big role in Satrapi’s book, throughout the book we get to see her family struggle through problems together. I feel like she humanized Iranian people this way. In another part of Satrapi’s book, she says “I got to go to my first party…my mom let me go, she also knitted me a sweater full of holes and made me a necklace with chains and nails.
Sophia Tolstoy was the second of three children, all girls, born to Andrey Evstafievich Behrs and his wife Liubov Alexandrovna Behrs. Her father was a physician and a student of his, Kukula, taught her to use his camera the summer she turned sixteen. Eventually, Kukula gave the camera to her as a present and she spent the summer recording images of her family and friends. Unfortunately, none of those first photos have survived, and it was more than twenty years before she picked it up again. When she was eighteen Sophia was introduced to Leo Tolstoy, who began to visit the family often.