Left to right:
Dress, 1925
Crystal beads on silk chiffon
Gabrielle Chanel, French, 1883-1971
Gift of Mrs. Wesson Seyburn 1968.c.650
Dress, 1925
Crystal beads on lace, silk ribbon
Gabrielle Chanel, French, 1883-1971
Gift of Mrs. Wesson Seyburn 1968.c.648
Dress, 1928
Metal sequins on silk tulle
Gabrielle Chanel, French, 1883-1971
Gift of Mrs. Wesson Seyburn 1968.c.649.AB
By the 1920s, Gabrielle Chanel was an internationally recognized couturierer, her fashion house joining such Parisian leaders as Patou, Vionnet, Lanvin, Callot Soeurs, Cheruit and Schiaparelli. Her affairs with wealthy men were influential to her success as well as to her designs, for the sportswear and riding clothes that they wore laid the foundation for her casual, modern style for women.
This style, known as the garçonne look, dominated fashion through the 1920s and reached a peak in 1925. The term was taken from the 1922 novel Le Garçonne by Victor Margueritte which told the scandalous story of a young woman who left her family home to make an independent life for herself—a tale that closely echoed Chanel's own rise from an impoverished orphan to an independent businesswoman. Youthful, slender, and slightly androgynous the garçonne style came to be called the flapper look in England and the United States.
When the two dresses on the right were made in 1925, Chanel had ended her affair with the Russian Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch and had taken up with the "wealthiest man in the world", the Duke of Westminster. The American jazz music scene, with Josephine Baker at its center, had exploded in Paris.
Chanel had just finished her designs for Diagaliev's Ballet Russe production, Le Train Bleu, and her work was exhibited at the influential L'Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. From this point on, the Chanel style stood for modernity.
In 1928 Chanel established her business on three floors at 31, rue Cambon, which had a salon of mirrors done entirely in the style modern. The blue sequined dress from 1928 with its rounded dipping hemline and rows of radiating sequins, demonstrates the transition from the tubular style of the 1920s to the streamlined modernism of the 1930s.
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