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    Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life
    Unavailable
    Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life
    Unavailable
    Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life
    Ebook365 pages7 hours

    Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

    By Justine Picardie

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Filled with fresh new research and never-before-seen photos, this updated edition of the definitive biography of Coco Chanel deepens our understanding of the history and legacy of the incredible woman who shaped modern fashion and created an empire of haute couture.

    Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor, conjuring up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, bestselling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time. But she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture; and what lies beneath her own glossy surface is darker, more mysterious, and far more intriguing.

    Uncovering remarkable new details about Gabrielle Chanel’s humble early years, Justine Picardie picks up the legend Chanel where it began—in orphanhood and poverty. Throwing new light on her passionate and, at times, dark relationships and providing profound insights into her connections with Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, and Dali, this beautifully constructed portrait gives a fresh and penetrating look at what made Coco Chanel the strong-spirited and powerful presence she became. An authoritative account, based on personal observations and interviews with Chanel’s last surviving friends, employees, and relatives, the book also unravels her coded language and symbols and tracks the influence of her formative years on her legendary style.

    Feared and revered by the rest of the fashion industry, Coco Chanel died in 1971 at the age of 87, but her legacy lives on. This special new edition has been extensively revised and updated and offers a uniquely authoritative account of the world’s greatest designer. Adding fresh new insights and discoveries, it comes complete with a compelling array of previously unseen images from the Chanel archives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 5, 2013
    ISBN9780062273826
    Author

    Justine Picardie

    Justine Picardie is an acclaimed author and journalist. She has written six books, including her critically acclaimed memoir, If The Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death. Her most recent book was Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, a biography of the sister of legendary fashion designer Christian Dior. Having started her career at The Sunday Times Justine went on to become a columnist for The Telegraph, editor of the Observer Magazine, and features director of British Vogue. Today, Justine Picardie is a contributing editor to Harper's Bazar, having previously been its editor-in-chief.

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    Reviews for Coco Chanel

    4/5

    28 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A satisfying real life tale of rags to riches tale of Coco Chanel reveals a strong women who made her way up to the higher circles of her time. She established an allure, a romance, a mystery so that even this detailed autobiography leaves questions about her life and real feelings. It is inspirational to a young entrepreneur as she battled through all kinds of setback, problem and disappointment but eventually has led to a household name that has survived the years as a quality luxury product.
    • 2/5
      If you are interested in Chanel you should read this but there are some caveats. First the photographs and reproductions are excellent but, instead of being grouped in the center as with many biographies, they are scattered throughout, and perhaps to ennhance them, all the paper has some gloss, which makes it very tiring to read the text due to glare. Second, the text is in a sans serif font with thin lines which is very hard on the eyes. It would be very stylish for short texts or ads, but for a book length text it's not appropriate and along with the glare from the choice of paper makes reading this extremely difficult.Finally on content: the book goes on and on about Chanel's friends and lovers at the expense of discussion of her work as a designer. Because she obfuscated her childhood the chapters on Chanel's life up to the early 1920s are difficult to follow and the book doesn't move exactly chronologically so it's hard to tell what things were happening when. And then there are endless paragraphs of backstory about the families, friends, and lovers of her friends and lovers and it's not always clear how that information helps us understand Chanel herself or why we should care. The biggest disappointment is how little information there is about Chanel's clothing designs. For example, there's more information about the house she built on the Riviera than there is about the clothes she designed at the same time. I know very little about her artistic development, and I'd like to learn about the salient features of her notable collections and individual pieces--and less about her glamorous "lifestyle" and the yachts of the husbands of her friends.

      1 person found this helpful