Dear Friends,
This Halloween, don’t be a lady of the night: be a heroine. Delight your friends with your knowledge
of history’s most remarkable women.
In this Ho-Alternative Halloween Series, I've collected the stories of my favorite spinsters with costume suggestions for each.
You’ll be proud to imitate these ladies, and your friends will admire
your creativity and éclat.
Coco Chanel
Born in 1883 in France, Gabrielle (“Coco”) Chanel is one of the most iconic fashion designers of the twentieth-century. Raised in
a convent after her mother died and her father abandoned her, Coco was inspired by the geometric, Romanesque architecture of the convent and the black and white of the nuns' habits. From there, Coco developed her slim, monochromatic, masculine clothing that shocked and inspired French fashion.
Refusing to wear the corsets, layers of ankle-stretching skirts and voluminous hats of ladies at the time, Coco
wore loose-fitting trousers, rode a horse like a man, cut her hair into a bob, hung layers of pearls around her neck, and went to the beach and got a tan. Working women soon followed her, wearing fashions that actually allowed them to do their jobs and maintain a daring yet delicate femininity.
"In order to be
irreplaceable one must always be different."
But transforming the fashion world was not enough. Coco broke centuries' old perfume
traditions. Before Chanel, women
wore simple rose water or floral scents (one flower at a time, please). The renegade Coco, already shocking to the male-dominated fashion world, hired chemists to create new, complex scents. She combined flowers
with tobacco and musk and other ingredients unheard of in parfumerie. The result was Chanel No. 5. It filled perfumeries and
department stores, shocking and delighting customers with its unique scent and sleek square bottle. Chanel No. 5 and its
descendants are worn and loved today, and women have long since abandoned
the overly simple scents of yesterday.
"Fashion fades,
only style remains the same."
In her personal life, Coco found love, lost it, and
carried on. Around 1908, she fell in
love with Captain Arthur Edward “Boy” Capel, a wealthy, cultivated Englishman.
He introduced the peasant-born Coco to the Orient, to literature, and to new worlds of design. He also financed her first
boutiques. Aching to free herself from the need to
marry (a requirement for most women), Coco worked with Boy to start what
would later become the Chanel empire. Thanks to him, the peasant-girl-Coco became Coco Chanel and the force behind modern women's fashion.
When Boy died in a motorcycle accident
in 1919, the attendees at his funeral said they saw Coco cry for the first and
last time.
"Nature gives
you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at
fifty."
Coco Chanel never married. She had a brilliant career and worked hard to
realize her dreams. No doubt, many men
would have married this glittering empress of fashion, but Coco remained a
proud spinster. She had revolutionized
not only women’s fashion but also modeled a woman’s right to make something of
herself, to raise her voice among a male-dominated industry, and to settle
for love, liberty, and nothing less. The epitome of elegance, Coco once remarked, "Elegance is not
the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those
who have already taken possession of their future."
For more on Coco Chanel, watch these fabulous video clips about her
life and her brand: http://inside.chanel.com/en/gabrielle-pursuit-passion.
For your Halloween costume, pair a knee-length nip-waisted dress (simple color), a tweed or wool jacket, Oxford pumps, a sleek,
unadorned hat, multiple strings of pearls, and of course, some perfume. As Coco said, “Une femme sans parfum est une
femme sans avenir” (“A woman without perfume is a woman without a future.”)
Happy Halloween! Return soon to read my next suggestion for a Ho-Alternative Halloween.
Cheers,
The Super Spinster
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