page_title: Coco Chanel
section_title: Legacy as designer
hierarchical_section_title: Coco Chanel / Legacy as designer
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Gabrielle Chanel dans l’entre deux guerres pose en marinière.
context_page_description: Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing, realizing her design aesthetic in jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Chanel herself designed her famed interlocked-CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s.
  Rumors arose about Chanel's activities during the German occupation of France during World War II, and she was criticized for being too close to the German occupiers to boost her professional career: One of Chanel's liaisons was with a German diplomat, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage. After the war, Chanel was interrogated about her relationship with von Dincklage, but she was not charged as a collaborator due to intervention by Churchill.
context_section_description: As early as 1915, Harper's Bazaar raved over Chanel's designs: "The woman who hasn't at least one Chanel is hopelessly out of fashion ... This season the name Chanel is on the lips of every buyer." Chanel's ascendancy was the official deathblow to the corseted female silhouette. The frills, fuss, and constraints endured by earlier generations of women were now passé; under her influence—gone were the "aigrettes, long hair, hobble skirts". Her design aesthetic redefined the fashionable woman in the post World War I era. The Chanel trademark look was of youthful ease, liberated physicality, and unencumbered sportive confidence.
  The horse culture and penchant for hunting so passionately pursued by the elites, especially the British, fired Chanel's imagination. Her own enthusiastic indulgence in the sporting life led to clothing designs informed by those activities. From her excursions on water with the yachting world, she appropriated the clothing associated with nautical pursuits: the horizontal striped shirt, bell-bottom pants, crewneck sweaters, and espadrille shoes—all traditionally worn by sailors and fishermen.
caption: Chanel wearing a sailor's jersey and trousers, 1928
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