TODAY'S TWD: COCO CHANEL

It's been a banner year for Toobworld when it comes to historical presentations and biographical portrayals. The mini-series 'John Adams' serves as the high water mark, but we've also seen 'Mad Men', 'New Amsterdam', 'Generation Kill' (albeit recent history), even 'Primeval', and an interstitial recreation of "the shot heard round the world" on ESPN.

This weekend brought the televersion of Coco Chanel in a new TV production starring Shirley MacLaine as the French designer. I won't lie - I didn't see it. But I've seen plenty of reviews around the web and she seems to have received a lot of positive reviews for her acting, even if she didn't attempt a French accent.

Here's a bit of info about Coco Chanel from the old standby, Wikipedia:

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (August 19, 1883 – January 10, 1971) was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure in the history of 20th-century fashion. Her influence on haute couture was such that she was the only person in the field to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Coco Chanel's stylish, elegant designs revolutionized fashion during the 1910s, freeing women from the uncomfortable and stiff apparel worn at the end of the 19th century. Chanel furthered her own image: the woman of the 20th century, embodying independence, success, personality, style, and confidence.

The influential Chanel suit, launched in 1924, was an elegant outfit composed of a knee-length skirt paired with a trim, boxy jacket, traditionally made of woven wool with black trim and gold buttons and worn with large costume-pearl necklaces.Chanel also popularized the little black dress which had a blank-slate versatility that allowed it to be worn for both day and night. The black Chanel dress was strapless, backless and more than a little risqué. It shocked the general public at large but quickly became a fashion sensation. The Chanel dress premiered in the third-ever edition of Playboy. This added to the controversy surrounding the Chanel name.

Much imitated over the years, Chanel's designs were manufactured across more price categories than any other in the high-fashion world. It was Chanel who also introduced costume jewelry to the fashion world, using a variety of accessories such as necklaces, chains or pearls of several strands. A bag with golden handles, an elegant pearl necklace, a tailored dress in black are the symbols of elegance and status that marked forever the history of fashion.

But it was Chanel No. 5 - considered the number-one selling perfume in the world - which helped her become a millionaire. The perfume was created in 1921 by Ernest Beaux at the request of Chanel, who said that it was "a woman's perfume with the scent of woman." Its Art Deco bottle was incorporated into the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York, in 1959. Chanel No. 5 was the first synthetic perfume to take the name of a designer. One of her most famous quotes is, "This perfume is not just beautiful and fragrant. It contains my blood and sweat and a million broken dreams."

BCnU!
Toby O'B

I almost named this post "Coco by A Cuckoo Poof", but that wouldn't have been quite right......

I'm not that crazy.