Coco Chanel, eleganza, bellezza e rivoluzione tesina

INTRODUZIONE

Questa tesina intende dimostrare come la figura di Chanel e la moda da lei imposta attingano dal

patrimonio letterario dell'antichità, essendo tuttavia inseriti attivamente nel contesto storico

dell'attualità. Si è proceduto analizzando vari aspetti legati a questo personaggio, in modo da

evidenziarne la complessità e le molte sfaccettature che hanno contribuito a creare la sua fama, e

a farla durare tutt'ora, rivestendola di un’aura quasi leggendaria. Il primo aspetto preso in

considerazione è stato come l’ideale estetico abbia influenzato Chanel, tanto nelle sue creazioni

quanto nelle scelte di vita; le somiglianze della sua vita con quelle di D'Annunzio sono state trattate

attraverso una breve introduzione all'autore e l'analisi di una delle sue più celebri liriche, ponendolo

in contrasto con Gozzano, autore che riconobbe in D'Annunzio un modello insuperabile. Il rapporto

con Oscar Wilde è stato svolto tramite il confronto di alcune celebri citazioni dei due artisti, mentre

una similitudine è stata trovata tra il messaggio dell'opera più famosa di Oscar Wilde, "The Picture

of Dorian Gray", che invita ad abolire gli eccessi, con la scelta stilistica di Chanel di rifiutare gli

eccessi della moda tipica della Belle Epoque. La scelta di rifuggire gli eccessi trova tuttavia le sue

radici in Orazio, di cui si è approfondito il tema dell'aurea mediocritas con opportuni riferimenti

testuali; sempre riferendosi alle scelte stilistiche della moda di Chanel, si è approfondita la poetica

della leggerezza di Callimaco, la cui semplicità formale è tratto distintivo anche delle creazioni della

stilista. Ultimo elemento caratteristico sono i contrasti, esplicitati negli abiti dal famoso binomio

bianco-nero o nella scelta di far indossare abiti, come i pantaloni, fino a quel momento destinati

esclusivamente alla moda maschile, sulle donne, reinterpretati qui come contrasto tra l'eleganza e

la perfezione formale del Simposio di Platone e il degrado del buon gusto esplicitato nel frammento

petroniano della Cena Trimalchionis. Un ultimo importantissimo aspetto è legato all'importanza che

a livello storico la figura di Chanel ha avuto; il suo operato infatti coincide con l'esplosione del

movimento femminista, che qui è stato approfondito, con particolare attenzione al movimento delle

suffragette e alla situazione italiana. Oltre a dare un (inconsapevole) contributo alla causa

attraverso le sue creazioni, che esaltavano la praticità e quindi identificavano un nuovo modello di

donna, avente un ruolo attivo nella società, lei stessa con la sua vita è stata un esempio di

emancipazione femminile, essendo solita ribadire la sua indipendenza dal genere maschile, anzi

esaltando la propria superiorità, e dimostrandola attraverso la realizzazione e il successo in ambito

lavorativo. Gli argomenti anticipati verranno ora esposti seguendo un percorso che partendo

dall’estetismo di Wilde, e trattando tutti gli aspetti sopra citati, ricondurrà nel finale a quello di

D’Annunzio. 5

OSCAR WILDE

THE AUTHOR

Oscar Wilde, being one of the main exponents of the aesthetic movement, he used to say “My life

is like a work of art”. To him pursuing the aesthetic ideal meant living a life marked by the constant

research of pleasure and beauty, seen as a value able to eternalize human beings. He lived his life

in the double role of rebel and dandy, by refusing the didacticism that characterized Victorian

novels and by using his wit to shock both his readers and audience.

QUOTES

OSCAR WILDE:

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own

experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

“Every experience is of value”

“My life is like a work of art”

COCO CHANEL:

“I don’t regret anything in my life, except the things I didn’t do.”

“You live but once; you might as well be amusing”

““I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite,

which I would like.”

THE DANDY

“To shock the bourgeois” is considered one of the most famous catch-phrases of dandyism.

Dandyism represents the nostalgia for the era when the aristocracy had a social superiority over

the masses. Whereas the XIX century assists to the diffusion of idols such as utilitarianism,

progress, velocity, money and success at all costs, personal style and lifestyle, as a symbol of

social position, are useful to the dandy to mark its superiority over the masses and the differences

between them. That’s in fact the main difference between a dandy and a bohemian, the latter tends

to identify himself with the masses.

It is possible to distinguish two different ways as how dandyism was perceived by people during its

era: a superficial and a deeper one. When this phenomenon started to become popular, many tried

to approach this way of living, by taking care of the exterior characteristics, such as clothing and

the most obvious physical attitudes. Yet dandyism was not perceived as a choice of living, and

many times the classification of a man as a dandy, despite the attempts of becoming one, could be

refused. According to many people this lifestyle cannot be defined using regular parameters, but it

follows individual laws, whose common element is the concept of distinction. The Wildean dandy

was an aristocratic whose elegance was a symbol of the superiority of his spirit, and an

individualist who demanded absolute freedom. Essential to the dandy was the building up of an

identity of his own.

QUOTES

OSCAR WILDE:

“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

COCO CHANEL:

“To be irreplaceable one must always be different”

OSCAR WILDE AND THE FASHION

To Oscar Wilde the first enemy of clothing was fashion, so that he used to say: “Fashion is a form

of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” Wilde really appreciated the

comfort of his clothes, whereas other people thought he was a total fool. He tried to spread his way

to see clothing but no one followed him (was he an inspiration for Chanel instead?).

During the aesthetic movement based on the concept “art for art’s sake”, dresses, as well as all the

other aspects of existence, had to aim at beauty and style, so as to make life itself a work of art.

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Wilde broke with the Victorian convention in the field of clothing, by bringing back the fashion of

knee-length trousers, which scandalized Victorian public opinion. In the late period of his life he

went for a more classical style, however keeping his own sense of style.

QUOTES

OSCAR WILDE:

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

COCO CHANEL:

“Fashion has become a joke. The designers have forgotten that there are women inside the

dresses. Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move,

to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape.”

“Fashion is made to become unfashionable.”

“Fashion changes, but style endures”

ART FOR ART’S SAKE

(THAT IS THE RESEARCH OF BEAUTY AS IMMORTALITY)

The concept of “art for art’s sake” is to Wilde a moral imperative and not merely an aesthetic one.

Art is seen as a way to reach beauty, and, as a result of it, immortality. Art cannot be explained in

words, because it is something greater than human beings, that can only admire art. Artists are

elected people who can approach art, they are alien to the concrete world and Wilde, as an artist,

wrote only to please himself and was not concerned with communicating his theories to his fellow-

beings. A dandy seeks his eternal youth, because he is attracted by beauty, and his life is

dominated by the will of being projected towards beauty. So beauty and eternal youth can be

merged into art. In fact art is the love for beauty and it is eternal. Then, as Wilde believed, “art as

the cult of beauty” is the only way to prevent the murder of the soul.

QUOTES

OSCAR WILDE:

“Beauty is a form of Genius-is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of

the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that

silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes

princes of those who have it.”

“It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.”

“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away

like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for

all seasons, a possession for all eternity.”

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only

that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.”

“Art survives people, art is eternal”

COCO CHANEL:

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion

has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

“Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.”

“Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics”

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

The picture of Dorian Gray is the work that better synthesizes Oscar Wilde’s thought, and allows us

to see him as an inspiration for Chanel’s works.

THE PLOT

The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The main character is Dorian Gray, a

young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to portray him. While

the young man’s desires are satisfied, including that of eternal youth, the signs of age, experience

and vice appear on the portrait. Dorian lives only for pleasure, making use of everybody and letting

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people die because of his insensitivity. When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait,

Dorian kills him. Later Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait, witness to his spiritual corruption,

and stabs it, but he mysteriously kills himself. In the very moment of death the picture returns to its

original purity, and Dorian’s face becomes “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome”.

ALLEGORICAL MEANING

Wilde plays on the Renaissance idea of the correspondence existing between the physical and

spiritual realms: beautiful people are moral people, ugly people are immoral people; so the picture

represents the dark side of Dorian’s soul, and that’s why it is awful; by stabbing the picture Dorian

accepts on himself all his sins and dies. The picture is restored to his original beauty illustrating the

theory that “art survives people, art is eternal”. The second allegorical meaning is that every

excess must be punished, reality cannot be escaped. Chanel’s philosophy of elegance is precisely

based on the same principle of simplicity, which consists in the refusal of all excesses.

CONCLUSIONS

Both Oscar Wilde and Chanel pursuit the ideal of beauty as an eternal value able to make their

acts remembered; there is plain literary evidence that Chanel was inspired by Wilde’s work, or in

general by the aesthetic movement and the figure of the dandy. In both cases excesses are

avoided, for ceaselessly researching the perfection of elegance. 8

I CONTRASTI

Lo stile di Chanel è caratterizzato da forti contrasti cromatici, tra il bianco e il nero; questa

ispirazione deriva dai primi anni della sua vita, quando frequentò un orfanotrofio gestito da suore, i

cui anni le lasciarono un'impronta profonda. Questo contrasto cromatico può essere letto in molte

chiavi diverse, come il contrasto tra bene e male, tra bello e brutto, tra luce e ombra. Oltre che

negli abiti in sé, il contrasto è visibile nelle scelte di Chanel, prima fra tutte quella di far indossare

per la prima volta i pantaloni (simbolo per eccellenza dell'universo maschile) sulle donne.

Partendo dalla sua ricerca dell'eleganza opposta al cattivo gusto e dal suo amore per i contrasti, si