Celebrating 125 years of Chanel Gabrielle

‘Coco' chanel gst price 2012 dazzled the fashion world and changed how women dress. If you love Chanel, observe the 125th anniversary of her birthday on Aug. 19.What seems like a million years ago, I wandered the streets of Paris. Truthfully, it was 1993, and I was in the City of Lights for the first time on high school spring break.Parts of the trip I don't recall well, but I distinctly remember my first trip to Chanel's flagship boutique. I had first seen the store in the documentary “Madonna: Truth or Dare” and wanted to pay homage to this brand I knew so little about back then.The store's namesake, Gabrielle “Coco” chanel gst price 2012, lived a remarkable rags-to-riches tale filled with plenty of fodder to make TMZ editors squeal with delight.She was outspoken and controversial. During World War II, she shuttered her fashion business and shacked up with a Nazi officer; she also was a homophobe (although she had a couple of bisexual trysts); and she was anti-Semitic.The French designer's strong sense of style and elegance ultimately outweighed the drama, and her designs revolutionized women's wear.On Aug. 19, fashionistas can pay tribute to the outspoken designer and celebrate the 125th anniversary of Chanel's birth. Like another figure of her time, Eva Perón, little was ever expected of chanel gst price 2012, who once lived in an orphanage after her mother died and her father abandoned the family. She was a seamstress during her teenage years and later had a stint as a cabaret singer.Fashion came into play when she opened a hat business, thanks to her beau's backing chanel gst price 2012 .
She moved on to his friend, Arthur (“Boy”) Capel, who is believed to have been the love of chanel gst price 2012 life and who supported her expansion from hats to clothes and from Paris to coastal resorts.Decades after her death, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and in 1957 at a Dallas fashion event, she was hailed as the most influential designer in the previous 50 years, and rightfully so.Chanel was a maverick for her time, mixing masculinity and femininity and finding new interpretations in everyday fabrics such as jersey and wool. Today, her admirers seek out the brand's hidden luxury, and chanel gst price 2012 subtleties can be seen playing out in works from fashion's major stars including Miuccia Prada and Austin-born designer Tom Ford.

chanel gst price 2012 women of the moment range from “Sex and the City's” Carrie Bradshaw to Madonna, who wore Chanel on the cover of Elle earlier this year and to her induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.I caught up with a couple of Chanel lovers, including Austin multimillionaire Robin Campbell, who scours vintage shops and auctions in New York and Europe to find vintage Chanel pieces.“She was an outspoken person and definitely had controversy that followed her throughout her life, and despite all of that, succeeded,” says Campbell, who owns the charity and shopping Web site Cupidz Clozet. “It's great that her legacy has continued on.”Those legacy pieces included the art deco-clad Chanel No. 5, which was launched in the early 1920s and is considered the first fragrance to bear a designer's name. Other chanel gst price 2012 staples are the little black dress in black chiffon, the classic tweed suit whose hem was weighed down by a gold chain, strands of pearls, costume jewelry, sling-back pumps in ivory with black toes and quilted handbags with shoulder straps made of gold chain.Why she returned to fashion in 1954 – her name was still muddied – isn't exactly clear. Some publications and Chanel followers believe the designer, then in her 70s, was bored. Another camp says she didn't like the direction fashion was going. I'm a sucker for a comeback story, even though in the book “chanel gst price 2012 A Woman of Her Own” (1991), Chanel dismisses her story as a comeback tale.Her postwar collection included relaxed suits trimmed in braid; her signature monochromatic colors as well as strings of fake pearls and brooches; and the return of her little black dress.In the United States, her name found fresh acclaim, and her signature jersey suit became popular. The following year, one of her more well-received accessories — itself still a staple of the collection — was introduced: the quilted bag with shoulder strap, simply known by chanel gst price 2012 lovers as the “2.55″ bag, named after the month and year of its creation. (The original bag doesn't feature the iconic double-C Chanel logo of other handbags.)Chanel died in her private suite at the H?tel Ritz Paris in 1971. Thankfully, her legacy and style have lived on for decades through the grand interpretations of Karl Lagerfeld, who was hired in 1983 to design Chanel and has since turned it into a mega-luxury brand. As chanel gst price 2012 once said: “Fashion fades; only style remains the same.”