COCO CHANEL

It was the Englishman Arthur Capel, nicknamed "Boy" who attracted Coco Chanel to Deauville. A wealthy businessman who had made his fortune in coal freighting, he owned a polo stable. Having become Boy Capel's companion, Coco Chanel developed her activities with his help. In 1910, he lent her the funds to open a milliner's salon at 21 rue Cambon in Paris, under the name "CHANEL MODES". In the summer of 1913, while the couple was in Deauville, Boy Capel rented a boutique between the casino and the Hotel Normandy. The sign mentioned her full name: "GABRIELLE CHANEL"; the boutique was always full. In 1916, she used the beautiful and elegant Adrienne as a model in Deauville. She also took her own androgynous silhouette on the road, testing out her new outfits with their extreme simplicity and comfort in front of European aristocrats who were still heavily clothed in pomp and circumstance and held in rigid corsets. The shortage of fabrics due to World War I, as well as the relative shortage of domestic labor, created new needs for women. Chanel, a free and active woman, perceived these needs. She bought from Rodier whole pieces of a jersey used at the time only for men's underwear. From then on, she imposed lines of casual, practical and aesthetic clothing: short pleated skirts, pants or pyjamas to be worn on the beach, polo shirts, jodhpurs, jerseys, sailors' jackets; an androgynous fashion that found its inspiration on the racetrack, on golf, tennis, on the beach and on yachts
" I gave back to the women's body its freedom ", said Coco Chanel. She who destroyed the fashion of corsets, parade clothes, underwear and padding created a new silhouette: the woman of the 20th century.