I Know It's Called "Before," But A Lot Of "After" Was Left Out

I finally watched Coco Before Chanel last night and it was about what I expected: More romance than fashion, with lots of montages. It started out pretty well but ended with Chanel being reflected in endless mirrors while models who were 2010-skinny put on a fashion show. I know there was more to the "after" of her career than that.

I enjoyed that the film's first half presented her as so cynical about love...until "the love of her life" died and the penultimate montage made it seem like she spent the rest of her life mourning him. (What about Stravinsky? Or that German officer she met in WWII? Talk about a pretext for a film.)

But it was enjoyable, if only to see some sewing and fabric on film. My favorite part was near the end, when she unrolled a bolt of powder-pink boucle suiting in that same "my lover is dead and I'm sewing through my grief" montage. I want some of that boucle!

Happy Belated Brithday, Mlle. Chanel

The Writer's Almanac told me that yesterday was Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's birthday (1883). She's always fascinated me, because she essentially started out in business as a kept woman and ended up with an empire:

Her parents were poor, she was an illegitimate child, and when her mother died, she was sent to an orphanage. When she turned 18, she went to work for a tailor, and she also sang in cafés and concert halls. She was a mistress to one wealthy man and then another, and with the money they gave her, she set up her own millinery shop, which she opened in 1910. Soon her clothes became popular among the elite of Paris. She took men's styles and made them feminine—loose clothes made from jersey, short skirts, suits—and women were relieved to have comfortable clothes suddenly be stylish, and to get rid of the corsets that had been popular for many years....She said, "Fashion fades, only style remains the same."

She also single-handedly made the suntan popular, after an outing on someone's yacht, launching 130 years of a tan equalling health and leisure instead of time spent being an outdoor laborer.