CHAPTER 10

Understand Profit; Strive for Independence

LEARNING FROM

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) maintained that fashion ought to be comfortable and chic. She espoused this guiding principle at a time when the notion was totally alien to the fashion world. Accordingly, in 1916 she made the first ever proper clothes out of jersey, a material that had previously been deemed good enough only for men’s underwear. In 1918 she went on to create the first women’s pajamas, a previously inconceivable notion because during the first part of the twentieth century it was still self-evident that men’s and women’s clothing should be as different as night and day. Coco Chanel certainly challenged that convention, borrowing elements of men’s apparel to incorporate in her fashion for women. In so doing she gave women unprecedented freedom....