Famous Fashion Designer Gabrielle Coco Chanel Essay

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, known to most as Coco Chanel, “Arguably the most influential fashion designer of all time, Coco Chanel revolutionised the way women wore clothes and paved a new way for the fashion brand, capitalising on the changing times she was living in and her status as a fashion icon”(Dunne). Her clothing designs, from the use of jersey to the Chanel suit demonstrate her rebellious to the common norm. Her impact changed the fashion industry completely to something once dominated by tight fitting, near strangulation attire to a looser and comfortable fit suitable for every occasion. Everything in a clothing department store has her fingerprints, look and one can see T-shirt made from jersey, bags with the patted pattern and chain shoulder, garments of the color black, all originating from Channel’s fashion empire.The revolutionary idea of making apparel fit for what a woman wanted, in the changing world of the 1920s is Channel’s most memorable accomplishment.Despite many people pinpointing Chanel’s legacy to her personal life, it was actually her timeless designs and their influence on women’s historical apparel that created a long lasting legacy that focused on women looking and feeling empowered.

Deluxe: How luxury lost its luster, by Dana Thomas, brings a hard hitting, raw look at the world of luxury and the mass demand of luxury that has occurred. The book was published by the Penguin Group in 2007. Luxury is defined by Thomas as truly special, and was only available to the aristocratic world of wealth and old money in western culture. Luxury signified an experience and lifestyle that denotes royalty, fame, and fortune. However, with large companies owning the former family-owned luxury producing businesses, profits are the main goal not the production of luxury. Thomas reveals the unfortunate demise and rise of

Coco Chanel was one of the most influential fashion designers of the Twentieth Century and she was the first significant female fashion designer. The fashion world was impacted by Chanel’s phoenix like return to fashion after her retirement in 1953. Chanel introduced men and women to practical yet elegant styles. Although Chanel has been deceased for forty-one years her undeniable influence on fashion and women’s roles in society will be remembered for generations to come. Coco Chanel was an iconic designer and continues to inspire men and women around the world.

From consumer’s perspective, the motivation of their purchasing high-end products is complicated. According to the report of Mintel (Academic.mintel.com, 2013), which showed that the reason why a large number of customs have purchased luxury merchandise in UK. There were 44 percent of female interviewees and 48 percent of male interviewees bought high-end goods due to the good quality. In addition, 31 percent of men and 18 percent of women consider the sophisticated technique

The consumption of luxury goods in China is mounting sharply. Not only those born to elite families, but also many common people are greedy for luxury brands (China, a Booming

in 2011, and their spending jumped by 13 percent. Compare this to single women, whose spending grew less than 2 percent, and the average Japanese consumer, whose spending dropped.5 Young men, it seems, saw the March 11 disaster as a good reason to live for the moment, and Japan’s luxury goods market appears to be a beneficiary. Finally, when we look at segmentation by income, Japanese who spend more than a million yen (about $12,000) a year on luxury goods are more than three times as likely to say they are switching to high-end brands than to low-end brands (Exhibit 3). Those who spend less than half as much are reporting the opposite.

Sociocultural: In the recent years, the desire to appear wealthy has attributed to the increased popularity in luxury products. Also, the desire for luxury goods was promoted by effective advertising and TV programming that promoted conspicuous consumption to middle-income consumers. Middle-income consumers also tend to “reward” themselves with luxury items.

An economist and sociologist who lived from 1857 to 1929 and who is best known for  the  create term “conspicuous consumption” in his book “The Theory of the Leisure Class” (1899). He was interested in the relationship among the economy, society and culture. He analyzed the social order and believed that people made purchases to signal their economic status and accomplishments to others. Veblen critiqued the consumption habits of

According to Luxury Activist (2016), luxury goods purchase in physical stores has been growing by 3% since 2013, online sales have a solid 20% growth reaching 6.7 billion pounds. Indeed, luxury sales online have reached 12.5 billion pounds in 2014, doubled it from the previous year. McKinsey forecasts all luxury brands would embrace the online market by 2025 (75% was digitally influenced until 2014), the online luxury sales may go up to 62.5 billion pounds (Remy, Catena and Durand-Servoingt, 2015). The online share of total online luxury sales was expected to double from 6% (in 2015) to 12% by

Hunger for luxury items and people’s strife for the brands and items they associate with being beyond reach is paramount for this system. It is this drive for items one can’t have that the author feels is one of the benefits of consumerism. He declares, “…the aspiration of the poor to

The author who inspired the topic of this thesis is Dana Thomas. As a fashion writer, Dana Thomas, has analyzed the changes in luxury fashion business. Thomas has been writing about fashion for the past twenty-five years in various journals such as Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Financial Times, and more. Dana Thomas’ two books, Deluxe and Gods and Kings, are the inspiration for this thesis. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre goes into great detail the secrets of the leading luxury industry brands, namely Prada, Gucci and Burberry, to showcase the “New Luxury” of today and how “luxury lost its luster” by featuring the manufacturing and logistical processes. Thomas exposes that many luxury brands use the same Asian factories that mass-market retailers employ, which raises questions concerning quality and craftsmanship for luxury brands.

Definitions of luxury have continuously changed across centuries, and will likely change as luxury evolves in the years to come. It can be difficult to give a precise definition seeing as luxury is all but static. Looking at luxury in an historical context provides insights on different perceptions and views on the subject. In "The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation", Christopher Berry provides an analysis of the evolution of luxury as a moral concern tracing back from Ancient Greece up to you our age.

Coco Chanel, born Gabrielle Bonhuer Chanel, on August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France was an amazing woman who redefined fashion as we know it today. She was a clothing designer who revolutionized the fashion industry with her suits, little black dresses, and avant garde flare. Because of this quickly in her young life she became well know, and rose to be the fashion icon that she is today. From the timeless designs that are still popular to this day, and the sophisticated outfits that can be paired with great accessories Chanel has done it all. When it comes down to it though it was Coco Chanel’s philosophy that “luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it’s not luxury” that lead to her success. (“Coco Chanel”)

Andy Warhol, a pioneer in the visual art movement once said: “Whenever people and civilizations get degenerate and materialistic, they always point at the outward beauty and riches and say that if what they were doing was bad, they wouldn’t being doing so well, being so rich and beautiful” (Warhol, 1975). Throughout history, luxury emerged as early as civilization did. For old Romans, the concept of luxury was a “disruptive power of desire”. They set up the first laws about luxury: “how much could be spent on banquets and adornment” (Ward, 2011). Since the rise of Christianity, luxury stared to changed its meaning to be related to lust and sexuality. Until 17th century, perspectives of

This behavior brings competitive advantages to the European luxury brands. Moreover, customers in different countries have different purchase behaviors. For instance, some countries’ customers are willing to move away from common recognized brand, because they want to purchase more exclusive products. Furthermore, because of the increasing speed of globalization, people are more likely willing to travel between different countries. These travelers will buy luxury good during their trips. In fact, Chinese tourists contributed over one third of sales in Europe. The luxury goods industry should notice to adjust the actual demand between local people and tourists in Europe