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Path · Fashion · France · Today

Chanel

How a milliner dressed a century

Every Chanel object is a decision: an underwear fabric turned into a dress, the colour of mourning turned into chic, a numbered sample turned into the best-selling perfume in the world. This chapter follows those decisions, from Deauville in 1912 to the comeback of 1954.

Context first

This one opens without an account, and it is read before the lessons.

  • The place
  • The era
  • The people
Around 1900, a woman does not runAround 1900 the elegant woman lives in a corset, under huge feathered hats, and even her tailored suit gets in the way of walking. Then the war puts women in men’s places, and their bodies want to move. Enter Chanel.8 min

The lessons in this path

  1. 1Chanel, or how a milliner dressed the centuryChanel took out of fashion whatever stopped you moving: the corset, the train, the ornament. Underwear jersey, mourning black, a sample number: she turned them into the luxury of the twentieth century.9 min

How these lessons are written

Each lesson starts from a brief and from period sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives and museum websites. A fact that cannot be tied to one of them does not get written. The sources are listed under each lesson, linked directly.

The rhythm

A lesson takes five minutes, four questions at the end, then a review the next day, at three days, seven, twenty-one and sixty. It is that spaced return that makes what you read stay. One a day is enough, and nothing stops you doing several.

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