David Evans CHAPTER ONE
Coco Chanel
'Fashion is not just about dresses; fashion is something in the air. Fashion is in the sky, the street. Fashion is about ideas, the way we live, what is happening.'
Coco Chanel
At the start of the twentieth century, the idea of women in business seemed crazy. In those days, men held all the positions of power and made all the decisions about money. They believed that a woman's place was in the home, looking after her children, cooking for her family and managing the house. If a woman needed to work she could perhaps find a job in a shop or in a factory, but she had no chance of working as a businesswoman or a banker or a lawyer.
Women's fashions in the US and Europe at that time supported this idea of their position in society. Fashionable women wore long dresses that almost touched the ground. This made it difficult for them to drive a car, ride a horse or even walk quickly. As a result, they needed men to arrange their travel for them. A fashionable woman was also expected to keep her skin as white as possible to show that she didn't work outside in the sun. This meant that women spent a lot of time indoors. When they went out, they often wore large hats that were decorated with flowers, leaves and fruit. These protected their faces from the sun and made it even more difficult for them to move around.
But many women weren't happy with their position in society, and they didn't like the clothes they had to wear either. One of these people was a Frenchwoman called Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel. When she went into business in 1910, she planned to change the clothes that women wore. But over the next sixty years she did much more than that, as she became one of the richest and most successful business-woman of the century.
***
Coco Chanel had no experience of business when she opened her first hat shop in Paris in 1910. She was only twenty-seven years old and she came from an ordinary family. When she left school, she worked for a dressmaker for a short time. Later she tried to become a singer in a nightclub, where she was given the name 'Coco'. Coco was an attractive young woman; she always dressed well and she was good at making friends. Although she didn't have any money, she mixed with fashionable, successful people and her boyfriends were often rich young army officers. One of these was a handsome young Englishman with a big black moustache, called Boy Capel. When Coco asked him to lend her some money so she could open a shop, he was surprised. He had never heard of a woman in business before, but he liked the idea.