Joyeux Anniversaire, Mademoiselle!
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel turns 127 today. Her legacy - sometimes bastardized, sometimes admired, but always revered - lives on. The historians try to understand her, the fashionistas keep her hip, the design students list her as a major influence and the socialites continue to give their $$ in support of the empire continued by Kaiser Karl.
"Fashion fades, only style remains the same."
She had books written about her - j'adore CHANEL Solitaire by Claude Delay...which was also a film starring Marie-France Pisier made in the early 1980's. There's also CHANEL and her world by Edmonde Charles-Roux. I have the first publishing done in the 1970's with only black and white photos. It's since been re-released in color...there's also another biography by Axel Madsen and so on. The past 10 years brought out a flurry of films: Coco Chanel starring Shirley McLaine, Coco before Chanel with Audrey Tatou and most recently Chanel & Stravinsky: The Secret Story with Coco portrayed by Anna Mouglalis. But even with all of these creative efforts, I would have still loved to have seen Coco - the Broadway musical in 1969, starring Katherine Hepburn. They say that Mademoiselle Chanel herself refused to see the production due to Kate's ad-libbed vulgarities that she sprinkled throughout the show.
"Elegance is refusal."
"Don't spend time beating on a wall hoping to transform it into a door."
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