Tanner Lunetta
The Influence of Coco Chanel and Chanel Brand on the Intersection of Feminism and Fashion
From popular feminist perspective, fashion is perceived to be the antifeminism: an industry that teaches women to define themselves by their appearance, holding them to inhuman standards presented on whitewashed runways, with advertisements for products to conceal flaws they didn't know they had, and the nearly inescapable vulgar oversexualization of femininity. While I can absolutely understand this perspective and agree that these complaints are definitely problematic and need improvement, I feel that fashion is in fact feminist, and that by refocusing on the ways that fashion benefits women we can reclaim fashion as a vessel for the liberation of women and the breaking down of stale, false, and harmful societal constructs. I hope to provide supporting evidence for this claim by analyzing the life and work of Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel, most commonly known as Coco Chanel, who most would agree is the most influential name and possibly even the founder of the modern fashion industry of today. Through the analysis of Coco Chanel and her personal impact on the fashion industry as well as feminism, I hope to provide evidence that fashion is feminist. Coco Chanel was born August 19th, 1883 in Saumur, France into poverty and a troublesome broken household with the death of her mother and her father abandoning her to an Catholic orphanage. As she grew older she began work as so many fashion legends do- as a shopgirl, or a female sales associate, for a small boutique. Later, she was a singer for a café which brought her into association with a series of wealthy men, an important and reoccurring theme in her life. The 1