Sure, she made nice clothes.
But let us not forget, during the war, she was sleeping with a Nazi in the Ritz, amidst the struggles of the rest.
In my opinion, she doesn't deserve so much attention. Fontaine wants us to see her as an independant woman, her struggle to reach the top. But this rag to riches story does nothing for me, her living in luxury at Balsan's estate doesn't leave alot for me to sympathise.
...dresses are nice though.
I didn't know she slept with a Nazi during the war. That sounds like it would have made a far more interesting film. I thought the movie was OK and I know it was called "Coco Avant Chanel", but the story seemed to take ages concentrating on her time with Balsan and Boy and then suddenly she made clothes and was famous. There was nothing in between and I got no real idea of how it all happened.
For me, whether she deserved to be celebrated isn't the issue, the movie just didn't show her struggle or drive to succeed very successfully.
I thought her unique and astonishing taste, the influences that formed that taste, and her abilty to take an idea and make it into a garment... a new style or look, penetrated the whole film beautifully.
shareAgreed.
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefsī²
I haven't seen the movie yet, but whatever Coco did in her personal life does not surpass her legendary success as a fashion designer. What she did for women is astounding. In a way, she gave a chance for women to liberate themselves - no more corsets.
Though some people would say "Oh, she just designed clothes", she did much more than that.
And now, many MANY decades later, she's still as iconic as ever.
That's why we SHOULD celebrate her.
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Not quite blonde, are we? More of a dirty blonde. - American Psycho
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michaelflatle --
What do you mean by "should wear corsets"? It's perfectly clear you don't have ANY idea of what you're talking about. I am a corset lover myself, but I dare you to try and wear a real corset for a whole day. Try to google 'corsetry' and you'll see what it's all about. The real corsets women used to wear during the victorian times used to cause DEFORMATION OF THE BONES, not to mention the suppression of the lungs, liver and kidneys which cause terrible diseases and DEATH.
Of course I'm talking about the real corsets with boning - the ones for example women used to wear during the victorian era under their clothes. In fact, when hitting puberty girls were forced to wear a corset nearly every day of their life to achieve that hour-glass look. When tying a corset up they used to push and squeeze themselves painfully.
After this brief info about corsets, I'm sure you changed your mind.......unless, of course, you want us women to suffer physical pain for the sake of men.
ps. I'm still a corset lover....but only for a few hours a week, without the heavy boning.
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You should never have trained that sheep how to put on clothes.
shareI think we might get really quite bored if films, etc., only dealt with people who were 100% lovely... I don't really know much about the woman. So, I can't say how much the film strays from reality. But, it certainly doesn't make her out to be a saint or anything... She made use of her talent and took full advantage of any opportunities that were offered to her.
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Yes, lets glamorize a traitor. There is no denying that Coco was a revolutionary force in fashion, but don't sit there and applaud the fact that she betrayed France and the Allies. She only escaped being served formal war crimes charges in the aftermath of WWII by living in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. If she had in fact faced justice for her deeds, I doubt her rosy reputation would still be intact.
shareHow can you call the women a traitor, the WHOLE French government at the time was āservingā Hitler if I remember my history correctly?
shareRE: Felinia05
'...but don't sit there and applaud the fact that she betrayed France and the Allies.'
Please don't get me started on George W Bush's grand-pappy Prescott Bush.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
We all make mistakes, and who's to judge someone in love?
She was and remains an icon. She turned the fashion world upside down and enabled women to wear trousers. She may have been sleeping with someone on the wrong side of the line, but that doesn't make her a bad person... it makes her human, and yes. We should celebrate her as every other pioneer.
As strong as a small pony
-Well that's quite strong that is!
Fraternizing with people who want to destroy your country counts as more than a "mistake," in my book.
And her clothing wasn't for the average woman, so how were they "liberated?"
Making it OK for women to wear trousers instead of skirts on a day-to-day basis was a huge liberation it her time.
As for "fraternizing with people who want to destroy your country"... well she wasn't sleeping with Hitler was she? There were a lot of men who served Hitler without truly wanting to do any evil, you simply cannot look at such a huge part of history with some special black&white goggles. I know that helping in any way with the holocaust is too terrible for the mind to fully grasp, but we never know under what type of circumstances each individual served.
As strong as a small pony
-Well that's quite strong that is!
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Not true. I'm assuming here, that you would claim every German soldier in World War Two to be a Nazi? They clearly were not all executed. Not even all of the people in the Nazi party itself were executed. It was partly a political affiliation.
How many nasty, wrong doers, had led political parties throughout history? Clearly not every follower, supporter or member, of each one of those parties deserves to die. Politicians and leaders lie, tell half truths, and deceive people all of the time, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
In your way of thinking it would seem that there should be mass executions of people who are even guilty of being mislead and misguided. Just because they could not see through the lies and propaganda. People are very easily manipulated, if you ruled the world, I'm thinking most of mankind would be executed. I don't know, but isn't that a little like Hitler?
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Get real. Nearly any American politician, regardless of party could easily be portrayed as someone who wants to destroy the American way of life in one form or another, for better or worse, as the case may be.
It's been that way decades, at least, and I'd venture to say it's been going on since this world had it's very first leader, and not world leader, the first leader.
So basically in your ideology, it would seem, that anyone supporting the ruling party, or the potential replacement party is a very bad person. That makes a lot of us and our ancestors into being some nasty traitors. And here I thought, they were just trying to survive, in one way or another.
In hindsight nearly everyone is able to be demonized if you scrutinize their life close enough. Public figures are just easier to tear down.
If the criteria of making movies is to only base them on purely good people, who have only done purely good things. Not only would the movies be boring, there would be no movies. If the same criteria were to be used for books. There would be no literature, no recorded history, nothing.
People aren't perfect, not even close. Holding the rest of the world to ones ideals, is a recipe for self destruction, and likely that of others along the way.
They should give the WHOLE picture of her which would include her collaboration with the Nazis. That in fact was extensive and involved more than just sleeping with the enemy. Others were punished but she escaped apparently because she had connections in high places. She seems to have been a very unprincipled "survivor". She was so unpopular because of her involvement with the Nazis that she had to flee to Switzerland for almost ten years. The film should not have avoided this part of her life. One may praise her contributions to the fashion world but we should hardly avoid looking at the whole picture. This excerpt from the London Times article provides some much needed background:
" Perhaps Chanel-lovers also have no idea that she tried to wrest control of her perfume manufacturing from a Jewish family, taking advantage of pro-Aryan laws. Or that she was arrested for war crimes - and then mysteriously released.
Previously, I'd seen it mentioned that Chanel had survived the war rather comfortably at the Paris Ritz in the arms of a Nazi officer, Hans Gunther von Dincklage, and then gone into exile in Switzerland with him, but a few hours spent in the library revealed that she was far more deeply involved with the Germans than that. There was even a (somewhat ridiculous) Nazi plot, using Chanel as bait, called āOperation Modelhutā. "
Here's a link to the full story:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6027932.ece
I agree that bit shouldn't have been left out, and thanks for the link :)
I still view her as an icon and admire her for many things... this sheds some light on the parts of the mademoiselle that I *don't* admire.
Oh you are a handsome devil, what's your name?
Dude, it happened over 60 years ago, and she was even pardoned by the British royal family... if they were able to forgive, why can't you? Let it go. Lots of people slept with Nazis, perhaps even some people's grandparents on this board. Boycott the Pope if you feel so passionate about party affiliations of yesteryear. It would really be weird, to paste to the end of a movie about Chanel's life BEFORE that time period, a sticky note to indicate the associations of one of her boyfriends. Lots of people have had to flee one country for another depending on the social climate & their transgression. Here's a short list:
- Henry Miller
- Chopin
- Einstein
- Prince Edward (the one who abdicated, ie. the current Queen's uncle not her son)
Unfortunately, in wartime, the sh!t of business sticks to a lot of people who aren't intentionally evil... there are some businesses today which thrive that were involved, in let's say, contributing to WW2 concentration camp assembly. So forge your own metals and grow your own food in your commune if you want to remain untainted from any heritage of any wrongdoing committed by any person, corporation, or country that has ever done anything bad in their entire history.
As to the other folks who have warm & misty-eyed expectations of CEOs who found billion-dollar empires, I would love to see some examples of non-ruthless, unconnected, uncontroversial, yet successful businesspeople who would make Chanel an exception, not the norm, of a typical founder of a corporation. The only thing that stands out time & again is that she's a woman, and therefore judged differently.
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Should be celebrate Coco Chanel?
Yes, we should. If not everyone, at least women should. If it weren't for her we'd still be walking around in hoop skirts and corsets. Which personally I like the feeling of my jersey shorts, blue jeans, and t-shirts.
She slept with a Nazi so what. We have no idea what her views were on the Jews. Or that he was a true Hitler follower. Do you realize how many Nazi's did not truly support Hitler? There were roughly 50 (I could be mistaken) attempts on his life most of which by his own soldiers.
But Nazis are not the point of this movie. Chanel was an amazing woman who deserves to be celebrated. Without her god knows what life would be like today for women
"Without her god knows what life would be like today for women"
Are you seriously giving Coco bloody Chanel the credit for liberating women?
Jesus. Also, your ignorance is shocking: "She slept with a Nazi so what".
Humanity > "jersey shorts, blue jeans, and t-shirts".
Ladies, ladies. Please, get a grip.
I don't believe any of us is displaying ignorance.
We seem to be cognisant of what happened, but not reacting to it the same way you are.
yeah I'm sure that if it weren't for Chanel, women would still be walking around in corsets to this day. Gimme a break.
You saw Dingleberries?
Henry Ford is lauded as an American Hero, yet he and Hitler reportedly admired each other. In fact Hitler admired him so much that he had a life-size portrait of him in his office. Hitler called him his "inspiration." Despite all of this he is still regarded as a hero and people still buy his company's cars.
L. Frank Baum (author of, The Wizard of Oz) wrote articles calling for the extermination of Native Americans, yet the Wizard of Oz is still loved by millions.
The point is that most people (including those who have done great things) are not perfect people. No one is perfect, and with the good we have to take the bad. Every single person walking this earth has done something to be ashamed of, to different degrees. While we don't have to accept and embrace the bad, we cannot disregard the great achievements of people like Chanel, Ford and Baum, etc.
That being said I do agree that such actions should not be glossed over. We can't just hold these people up as heroes and ignore their bad behavior/actions. That is the problem with placing people on a pedestal. They are bound to fall down and disappoint us.
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michaelflatley, i can't decide whether you're being really ironic, or really dense. you'd rather buy tylenol that bayer but always a japanese car. because japan was neutral in ww2 were they? their war crimes against the chinese were legendary in terms of suffering caused. That's not to say i think japan is evil or what not, just that if you must act like a bigot at least by consistent.
as for coco shacking up with nazi's, a good point is made that just because you were nazi doesn't mean you agreed with everything that happened. But personal responsibilities dictate a certain philosophy. i think the film went some way to explaining those later actions, in that she was going to use whomever could provide her with the comfort she desired. Morals are a whimsy of the secure. She said it herself in the film with something like "a happiness in being poor? an invention of the rich."
great woman? In the sense that she was her own woman and made no apologies for it.but the idea that women would still be in corsets if not for chanel is a tad simplistic. No idea is original, any novel idea a person has there will be a handful of others thinking the same.
I don't even think a celebration is what this film is. Celebrating what exactly, bouncing an elite douche for a few years until an affair with a english guy. We'd call that gold-digging now. It's simply a life on film, a part of it at least.
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sure forgiving a country that holds little relation to what it was is a lot easier than forgiving a mega pharmeceutical company that seems to constantly smell of corruption, if the controversies surrounding them hold any water.
Valid point about "the poor" having morals but to be fair i said, "the secure" not the rich and i was talking from coco's apparent viewpoint as mentioned in the film not a personal belief. The film then, rather than excusing or glossing over her actions went some way to explaining them. We don't agree with what she later did but seeing her life and her beliefs help us to at least view her less two dimensionally, yes?
apologies for calling you dense, i had just got up and had not put my social interaction hat on.
"only da weak minded think dis way"? Are you deliberately being annoying, because it's not "cool" to spell this way. Just stupid.
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michaelflatley, I do wish you would learn to spell properly. No matter what you say, we're all going to think you're stupid and ignorant because of your spelling. While I doubt you have anything worth reading, we'll never know if perhaps you do.
shareI dont think the film was meant to be a celebration. It, in my opinion, is a portrait of a woman who refused to bend to society's will. She did not live for other people. She wanted something, and had the ambition and the will to attain it. We dont need to sympathize with her, because I dont feel that she was portrayed sympathetically. She was strong-willed, stubborn and shrewd. At a time when women were primarily frivolous, that's something to be noted. We do not see her become rich by her own means. We , I think, are supposed to understand where shes coming from regardless of if we agree with her choices.
Sleeping with a nazi does not ruin her image in my eyes, because I wasnt sympathetic to her in the first place personally. I was impressed by her ambition. We dont know the cirumstances of what happened with "the nazi", so I cannot judge her merely for the act.
It's called a movie. If u want real life watch a documentary