- Publisher
- It Books
- Published
- 2011
- Shelf
- fashion: Biography
- ISBN
- 9780062074171
Biography
Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life
Justine Picardie
The life behind the most carefully edited myth in fashion, with the parts Chanel spent decades hiding.
Why read it
Picardie separates what Chanel said about herself from what the archives show, and the gap is the subject. The orphanage, the war years, the borrowed aesthetics of the convent and the stable. Read it as a study in how a brand story gets built and maintained, because that is what it is.
Why own it
Well researched and genuinely well written, which biography of designers often is not. It is also the best available account of how a personal style becomes a house code.
Who it is for
Anyone interested in how a founder's life becomes a brand, and any fashion reader tired of hagiography.
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
