Karen Karbo - The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the Worlds Most Elegant Woman

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

T here is an early picture of Gabrielle Chanel taken in a park in Vichy, France. Gabrielle is twenty-three, standing beside her favorite aunt, Adrienne, only a few years older. Im thrilled to report that the woman Giorgio Armani called the most elegant woman whos ever lived was not a classic beauty. She-who-was-not-yet-known-as-Coco had a thicket of dark hair, black eyes, and a wide pirate mouth. She looked like the girl at school who conned you into breaking the rules with her, then let you take all the blame. Both the writer Colette and Diana Vreeland (editor of Harpers Bazaar and Vogue) thought she looked like a bull. Perhaps back then bulls, like closets and serving sizes, were much smaller; Chanel was scampish, lithe, and agile. Vreeland, remembering Chanel at fifty would say, She was bright, dark gold-colorwide face, with a snorting nose, just like a little bull, and deep Dubonnet-red cheeks.

But in this picture, Coco is clearly not the Pretty One. The two young women occupy the left side of the frame. A man with poor posture, wearing a bowler, crosses the path behind them.

The picture titillates. You can already see the early stirrings of the iconic Chanel style. The more classically beautiful Adrienne is swimming in the typical park-strolling attire of the timea double-breasted tunic layered over a full, floor-length skirt, bloused up over a belt obscured by a bunch of extra fabric, some kind of a high-collared shirt tightly buttoned around her neck, and one of those infamous fin de sicle hats that looked like a platter of pastries. Her clothes seem to have no particular relationship to her body; they express nothing aside from the fashion of the time.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, looks fresh and almost rakish. Her skirt is trim, A-line, and ankle length. Her matching jacket is hip length with a notched collar, nipped in slightly at the waist. Her blouse is plain, her belt wide; her hat is a straw boater pinned up on one side, like a Musketeer. Shes wearing something frilly around her neck that feminizes the whole streamlined ensemble. Her outfit seems well considered, the proportions just right.

You cant help thinking that Chanels taste must have been genetic, that she discovered as a young woman what became her and never lost faith in it the way some of us do. She never woke up one morning, sick of her impossibly well-cut jackets and pearls and thought, What I really need is a hat in the shape of a shoe or a flame-colored rayon sari trimmed with tiny gold cymbals. The times surged and changed beneath her, but over the decades Chanel merely elaborated upon what she preferred, what she knew to look good on her, and what she found to be both comfortable and practical. If nothing else, the woman was a complete stranger to the embarrassing impulse buy, and for that alone we should salute her.

Its impossible to resist further overanalyzing the picture: In it Adrienne is gazing at Gabrielle, while Gabrielle is looking straight at the photographer and thus out at the world.

For nearly a hundred years, Coco Chanel has been synonymous with every piece of clothing we consider stylishand with lots of stuff to which we never give a thought. Throw open your closet door and you will find the spirit of Chanel. If you have a collection of jackets for tossing on over a pair of jeans, the better to look as if youve actually dressed for the occasionas opposed to simply parked the lawn mower, given your nails a once over with the nail brush, and walked out the doorthats Chanel. Any black dress is a direct descendent of Chanels 1926 short silk model. A knee-grazing pencil or A-line skirt? Chanel. Jersey anything? Chanel again.

She gave us real pockets, bell-bottoms, twin sets, drop waists, belted cardigans, short dresses for evening, sportswear including riding breeches, and the need to accessorize madly at all times. Anything thats got simple lines, skims the body, is easy to move in, and affords the loading on of a lot of jewelry is Chanel.

So too is anything in which prettiness trumps quirkiness. Chanel ran screaming from the latest fads. She considered them to be expressions of cheesy grandstanding, and, anyway, they rarely held to her standards of simple elegance. Thus ponchos, stirrup pants, or backless dresses cut in a manner that reveals your thong are definitely not Chanel. If you own anything that has epaulets (and you are not in the armed forces), an unnecessary amount of fabric, ill-fitting arms, or Hulk-size shoulder pads, it is not Chanel. Anything related to the grunge revival, featuring ripped tights that look as if youve barely survived a mugging? Uh, no.

Anything in which you cannot breathe, sit down, or get into a car without flashing your lady bitswell, I dont even need to say it. When Chanel observed that not all women have the figure of Venus yet nothing should be hidden, this is not what she was talking about. (To clarify, she meant that the loose, long T-shirts we reserve for fat days do nothing but make us look fatter.)

The Chanel aesthetic is like the force in Star Wars, surrounding, penetrating, and binding together the universe of fashion, now and forever. As I write this Im wearing a pair of J. Crew boy jeanseven though theyre square through the hip with straight legs and a button fly, they are cunningly cut to prevent your looking like an appliance boxand a chocolate brown, long-sleeve cashmere T-shirt. Both pieces descend straight from Chanels once-shocking ideas that with a smidge of fancying up, menswear could be easily retooled for the ladies and soft, body-defining fabrics (some of which were normally used for underwear) could make the simplest garment seem