“A woman should mix fake and real. To ask a woman to wear real jewelry only is like asking her to cover herself with real flowers instead of flowery silk prints.”
—Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971), French fashion designer. Photo courtesy of Chanel. To read more fabulous Fashion Statements, click here.

“Let’s create something new, not ape the despised bourgeois. You can also try to piss off the bourgeoisie by forcing them to accept something unacceptable, whatever the format.”
—Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer, discussing gay marriage. To read more fabulous Fashion Statements, click here.

Read More »

“There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.” —French couturier, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. To read more fabulous Fashion Statements, click here. To read how Chanel overthrew a strike of her seamstresses and tricked them back to their sewing machines, read the Story Behind the Style.

On this day in 1936, the designer wins her fight against striking workers, gives the boot to squatting protesters and reclaims her legendary design studio.

You’ve got to love the French. The same egalitarian idealism that has subsidized baguettes also created the country’s enviable 35-hour workweek, endless national holidays and eight-week paid vacations. But back in 1936, things weren’t as rosy. The population—as passionate for workers’ rights as they are today—was hopping mad that certain employers expected their minions to stay until the job was finished, which often meant that days extended as long as eight hours, and sometimes even longer. Read More »

It had been an interesting few years for Elsa Schiaparelli leading up to June 18, 1932, when an exhaustive profile of the Italian-born designer was published in the venerable pages of the New Yorker.

Just 10 years earlier, Schiaparelli, penniless and husbandless, picked up her young daughter and left their adopted home in the U.S. for Paris. After working a few odd jobs in the couture industry, she made a sketch of a sweater—a black knit pullover with a trompe-l’oeil white bow knitted around the collar—and hired an Armenian woman to knit it. The sweater appeared in the novice designer’s nascent collection in November of 1927, and promptly landed in the December issue of American Vogue. (Prior to any Read More »