page_title: Coco Chanel
section_title: Designing for film
hierarchical_section_title: Coco Chanel / Established couturière / Designing for film
caption_attribution_description: English: Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov in exile in the 1920s
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: In 1931, while in Monte Carlo Chanel became acquainted with Samuel Goldwyn. She was introduced through a mutual friend, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin to the last czar of Russia, Nicolas II. Goldwyn offered Chanel a tantalizing proposition. For the sum of a million dollars (approximately US$75 million today), he would bring her to Hollywood twice a year to design costumes for MGM stars. Chanel accepted the offer. Accompanying her on her first trip to Hollywood was her friend, Misia Sert.
  En route to California from New York, traveling in a white train carriage luxuriously outfitted for her use, Chanel was interviewed by Colliers magazine in 1932. She said that she had agreed to go to Hollywood to "see what the pictures have to offer me and what I have to offer the pictures." Chanel designed the clothing worn on screen by Gloria Swanson, in Tonight or Never (1931), and for Ina Claire in The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932). Both Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich became private clients.
  Her experience with American movie making left Chanel with a dislike for Hollywood's film business and a distaste for the film world's culture, which she called "infantile". Chanel's verdict was that "Hollywood is the capital of bad taste ... and it is vulgar." Ultimately, her design aesthetic did not translate well to film. The New Yorker speculated that Chanel left Hollywood because "they told her her dresses weren't sensational enough. She made a lady look like a lady. Hollywood wants a lady to look like two ladies." Chanel went on to design the costumes for several French films, including Jean Renoir's 1939 film La Règle du jeu, in which she was credited as La Maison Chanel. Chanel introduced the left-wing Renoir to Luchino Visconti, aware that the shy Italian hoped to work in film. Renoir was favorably impressed by Visconti and brought him in to work on his next film project.
caption: Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov in exile in the 1920s
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