Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Title:   Sleeping with the Enemy - Coco Chanel's Secret War Author: Hal Vaughn Pub. Date: August 2011 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Format: Hardcover , 304pp Overview :  “From this century, in France, three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” –André Malraux Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire. Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan.” And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black...

This fall is shaping up to be a great time for Scandalous Women in movies. Not only is there a new biopic of Chanel starring Audrey Tautou, which I alerted readers to last month, but on September 19th, Lifetime will be premiering a tv-film about painter Georgia O'Keefe. The production was announced in TV Guide last November that "Oscar nominee Joan Allen and Oscar winner Jeremy Irons will star in a Lifetime biopic about the late artist Georgia O'Keeffe, with Bob Balaban set to direct. Allen also will take on executive producer duties for the first time, alongside City Entertainment's Joshua D. Maurer and Alixandre Witlin, says The Hollywood Reporter." Georgia will follow the turbulent 20-year love affair between the celebrated artist (Allen) and photographer Alfred Steiglitz (Irons). The movie, was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer. Lifetime executive vice president Helen Verno says that the movie will "speak to viewers who are inspired by he...

Today marks the birthday of one of the most influential women in the history of the fashion industry, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. Her clothes are iconic, the interlocking C’s, spectator pumps, knit suits, the little quilted black bag, the perfume Chanel No. 5. Chanel is probably one of the most knocked off designers on the planet; just take a visit down to Canal Street in New York where you can buy an imitation Chanel bag for a song. Her name came to mean female emancipation and feminine allure. She was the only fashion designer to be named on TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Before her death she was even the subject of a Broadway musical, Coco starring Katherine Hepburn as Chanel. Chanel was not the first woman designer to break into the male dominated world of fashion in Paris, Madeleine Vionnet and Jeanne Lanvin were already designing by the time Chanel opened her first milliner’s shop. The first major fashion house was created by an Englishmen Ch...