With her trademark suits and her little black dresses, Coco Chanel was a fashion designer who came up with timeless designs that are still famous today. Coco Chanel, the original name Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born on 19th August 1883, Saumur France, and died on 10th January 1971 in Paris. She had a significant impact on the Parisian haute couture for about six decades and her elegantly casual designs encouraged women of fashion to abandon the uncomfortable and complicated clothes such as corsets and petticoats that were common in the 19th-century dress.
Chanel’s famous fashion innovations include the quilted purse, Chanel suit costume jewelry, and the “Little black dress.” Coco was raised by nuns who taught her sewing- a skill that lead to her career work. She got the name Coco from her brief career as a singer in clubs in Moulins and Vichy where they called her “Coco.” Her first success in clothing came from a dress she designed from an old jersey on a chilly day. Many asked her about the dress and she offered to design one for them. Below are her famous quotes about fashion and life among others.
Coco Chanel Quotes
1. “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”– Coco Chanel
2. “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”– Coco Chanel
3. “You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.”– Coco Chanel
4. “I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t think of you at all.”– Coco Chanel
5. “I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little – if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”– Coco Chanel
6. “A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.”– Coco Chanel
7. “Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.”– Coco Chanel
8. “Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.”– Coco Chanel
9. “Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.”– Coco Chanel
10. “I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well-dressed.”– Coco Chanel
11. “Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.”– Coco Chanel
12. “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”– Coco Chanel
13. “There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!”– Coco Chanel
14. “Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.”– Coco Chanel
15. “I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.”– Coco Chanel
16. “Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”– Coco Chanel
17. “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”– Coco Chanel
18. “If you are sad, If you are heartbroken , make yourself up , dress up , add more lipstick and attack . Men hate women who weep.”– Coco Chanel
19. “I consider lace to be one of the prettiest imitations ever made of the fantasy of nature.”– Coco Chanel
20. “If a man talks bad about all women, it usually means he was burned by one woman.”– Coco Chanel
21. “It’s not the appearance, it’s the essence. It’s not the money, it’s the education. It’s not the clothes, it’s the class.”– Coco Chanel
22. ‘The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive.”– Coco Chanel
23. “The age of a woman is not important: you can be wonderful in your 20’s, amazing in your 40’s and stay fabulous for the rest of your life.”– Coco Chanel
24. “There are rich people, and there are those who have money. They are not the same people.”– Coco Chanel
25. “People laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success. I didn’t look like anyone.”– Coco Chanel
26. “You cannot keep up a nightlife and amount to anything in the day. You cannot indulge in those foods and liquors that destroy the physique and still hope to have a physique that functions with the minimum of destruction to itself. A candle burnt at both ends may shed a brighter light, but the darkness that follows is for a longer time.”– Coco Chanel
27. “I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I am not.”– Coco Chanel
28. “Where should one use perfume?’ a young woman asked. ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed.”– Coco Chanel
29. “I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.”– Coco Chanel
30. “Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.”– Coco Chanel
31. “Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.”– Coco Chanel
32. “We are born with only one face, but laughing or crying, wisely or unwisely, eventually we form our own.”– Coco Chanel
33. “God knows I wanted love… but the moment I had to choose between the man I loved and my dresses… I chose the dresses”– Coco Chanel
34.” I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well-dressed.”– Coco Chanel
35. “I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.”– Coco Chanel
36. “There are many more attempts to define happiness than unhappiness. It is because people know all too well what unhappiness is.”– Coco Chanel
37. “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”– Coco Chanel
38. “Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.”– Coco Chanel
39. “There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Fashion is at once a captapillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night.”– Coco Chanel
40. “There is nothing worse than solitude. Solitude can help a man realize himself; but it destroys a woman.”– Coco Chanel
41. “In 1919 I woke up famous. I’d never guessed it. If I’d known I was famous, I’d have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb.”– Coco Chanel
42. “The more stupid and unlucky man is, the more claims he makes to the woman.”– Coco Chanel
43. “He will soon be claiming that the Resistance has liberated the world.”– Coco Chanel
44. “A woman’s education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stocking, never go out without a hat.”– Coco Chanel
45. “I’m so sick of immaturity, of name-calling, of labels, of gossip, of high school. It doesn’t make sense anymore, and I find myself being nice to people that I want to strangle.”– Coco Chanel
46. “I imposed black; it still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around.”– Coco Chanel
47. “Happiness is the secret of beauty. But who knows the secret of happiness? The wise woman keeps her cosmetics at hand.”– Coco Chanel
48. “Everyone marries the Duke of Westminster. There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel.”– Coco Chanel
49. “Fashion has become a joke. The designers have forgotten that there are women inside the dresses. Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move, to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape.”– Coco Chanel
50. “The problem of aging is the problem of living. There is no simple solution.”– Coco Chanel
51. “In fashion, you know you have succeeded when there is an element of upset.”– Coco Chanel
52. “What every Englishman thinks about patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel.”– Coco Chanel
53. “I simply value Arthur Capel friendship. And even so, he knows very little about me.”– Coco Chanel
54. “As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.”– Coco Chanel
55. “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”– Coco Chanel
Related: Virgil Abloh’s Most Inspiring Quotes
Video: Coco – Inside CHANEL
The story of a young orphan who reinvented herself and became Coco Chanel. In Chapter 5 of Inside CHANEL, discover Coco Chanel’s humble beginnings, from her birth in 1883 to meeting the love of her life Boy Capel. This new film unveils the woman behind the legend, who in a stroke of genius transformed the female silhouette. Coco Chanel closed one era and launched a new century of fashion.
Summary
Coco Chanel introduced the legendary Chanel suit with a collarless jacket and a well-fitted skirt. Her creations and designs were revolutionary borrowing elements of men’s wear and highlighting comfort over the constraints of the popular design of that era.
She helped women forget the days of corsets and other clothing that were confining. She was a woman of style aand class and her quotes clearly brings out her image.
Image credit: Justine Picardie, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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