More than half a century after her death, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is still fashion’s most influential designer. The little black dress, which she turned from mourning garb to everyday wear in the mid-1920s, is, as Vogue dubbed it then, “the Ford of fashion.” Her tweed bouclé suit, with its boxy deconstructed jacket and pencil skirt, designed in the 1950s in response to Christian Dior’s New Look hourglass, remains the chic uniform for women, as does its midcentury mate, the quilted 2.55 handbag. “I hear the briefs of brands that declare that they want to create a ‘classic,’ like No. 5,” Chanel’s former chief perfumer Jacques Polge told me when I was working on my book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. “It’s a mythical perfume.”
And yet, for all her influence, Chanel remains an enigma—one that more than 170 biographies, dozens of museum shows, and countless films have attempted to decipher, with varying success. Add now to that canon Coco Chanel: Unbuttoned, an Arena documentary airing on BBC Two on September 15, which argues that Chanel was “the first ever influencer,” and “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto,” the first U.K. exhibition dedicated to the trailblazing couturière’s modernist work, opening at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on September 16.
