Coco Before Chanel

Coco Chanel established a fashion empire through arevolution in style and in substance. Her designs allowed women, shorn of theencumbering accoutrements of 19th-century couture, to move about more freely.Her name became a brand on the strength of accomplishment, not spin. Chanel’s“little black dress,” a groundbreaker in its elegant simplicity, grew from herbelief that clothing should flatter the contours of a woman’s body, not contortthe body to fit an abstract ideal of femininity.

Coco BeforeChanel, starring Audrey Tautou (Amelie)as the designer in her aspiring youth, tells her origin story. A child ofmisfortune, Coco was reared in a Spartan butwell-run Catholic orphanage where she learned to sew. Even then, her eyesseemed caught by the clean, simple lines of the clothing around her, the nuns’habits and the uniforms of the orphan girls. Perhaps the root of Chanel wasplanted in that austere environment?

After the orphanage, Cocofound herself in a pre-World War I demimonde whose slender prospects for awoman of modest origins only encouraged her to seize each moment. She worked byday as a seamstress and by night in the bars, roaming between tables, singingrisqué songs and collecting a few centimes in her straw hat. Her audienceincluded well-lubricated officers and aristocrats, taking their pleasure underthe dim gaslight with the women of the evening. Cocowas relatively lucky with men, playing the courtesan and stepping gingerly upthe social ladder. Marriage interested her less than autonomy. Rather thanmarry into wealth, she wanted the opportunity to earn her own.

This was not easy in a society where men held mostof the cards and courtesans were often reminded of their inferior status. As Coco, Tautou’s big, dark eyes hungrily drink up the worldaround her, showing curiosity and wariness at the traps and hypocrisy of hersociety, and maintaining a reserve of sadness. She both endured and enjoyed thesexual favors of the men who helped her up the ladder.

One brief, wordless scene in the chateau of a benefactor speaks to herdesire as she runs her fingers across the marble sink of her own bathroom,tries out the bathtub for size and eyes the rows of leather-bound books liningthe shelves in the study like a full-dress army on parade. She wanted thewealth to live in the comfort that had been denied her and to pursue knowledgeand ideas beyond the elementary education she had received. Along the way, shewould liberate women from the confinement of the corset and from dresses thatresembled wedding cakes on display.