43 Classic Photographs That Prove Coco Chanel’s Taste Never Wavered
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was one of the 20th century’s most formative couturiers. Established first as a milliner, the French designer soon became synonymous with a new style of dressing that did away with corsets and layers of trimmings and tulles, instead embracing a more fluid silhouette shaped around a more androgynous ideal.
Chanel, who passed away aged 87 in 1971, did nothing by halves. If her clothes have now become synonymous with a monochrome palette, then her life, by contrast, was a colourful one, filled with embellished truths and an ever-changing backstory. While she never married, Chanel’s love life was dramatic, making her personal affairs as much a topic of discussion as her collections.
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Today, Chanel’s legacy lives on in her namesake house, now under the design direction of Virginie Viard, after a 36-year custodianship by Karl Lagerfeld, who died in 2019. The motifs that made up her work and her personal wardrobe — tweed suits, camellias, costume pearls and jewellery, a colour palette grounded in contrasting black and white and, of course, the interlocking CC insignia — remain just as pertinent, and are a testament to Chanel’s unwavering taste and forward-thinking vision.
Here, British Vogue takes a look at Mademoiselle Chanel’s life in style.
