C O C H A N E L

Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!

Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes; fashion is in the air, born upon the wind; one intuits it… it comes from ideas, manners, events…

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

How could a brain function normally under all that?

I forgot about lace, for I knew nothing rich would become me. I had only my kid-skin coat and my poor little suits. Capel said to me: Since it means so much to you, I will have an English tailor remake an elegant what you wear all the time…

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions. Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.

Saumur is a birthplace of Coco Chanel

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them. Fashion passes, style remains.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Qui qu'a vu Coco?

Coco Chanel with Etienne Balsan

I don't know why women want any of the things men have when one the things that women have is men.

I don't like the family. You're born in it, not of it. I don't know anything more terrifying than the family. There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel."

Boutique in California

Gabrielle Chanel in front of her boutique in Deauville, 1931

Boutique Chanel

Little Black Dress A beautiful dress may look beautiful on a hanger, but that means nothing. It must be seen on the shoulders, with the movement of the arms, the legs, and the waist.

Little Black Dress In 1926 American Vogue named Coco Chanel black dress a Ford, meaning its simplicity and its potential for an enormous and long- lasting success.

On the beach

A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J'aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.