Customer Reviews

Chanel: A Woman of her Own

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found it strange that some readers gave negative or highly critical reviews of this biography. Someone even commented on the difficulty in reading the French names! It's a little late to change Chanel's nationality and thank God! This biography is successful on a number of levels but primarily two: it recounts the fascinating life, in great detail, of the late Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel and it puts her professional contribution to the world in context. On a personal level, her life-story reads as a Dickens novel. Her's is a truly "rags-to-riches" story. Chanel was a woman who created a life and a legend against the odds. She was one of those rare and stunning creatures rising from practically nothing to become a household name. Her family was destitute. Her father abandoned her at an orphanage. Her attempts in music and theatre came to nothing. Her sewing skills were atrocious! Only after a young gentleman named Balsan recognized her talent through her unconventional beauty did her true potential begin to emerge. Chanel knew all of the greatest people of her age: Stravinsky, Cocteau, Dali, Misia Sert, and the Duke of Westminster, among others. Many of these people she knew intimately. How tragic that even after these acquaintances and global successes as a designer, Chanel never really found success in love. Professionally, the impact of her designs are still with us today and influencing generations of new designers and artists. From a perspective of fashion, Chanel almost single-handedly pulled the 19th century world into the modern age by pulling women out of corsets and sliding them into pants. The "little black dress" and classic Chanel suit are not only articles of clothing, they are timeless works of art. Madsen has succeeded in writing a biography that does not fall short as other books on Chanel have in the past. His biography begins BEFORE her birth and continues on AFTER her death. He explores her roots and discusses the ongoing impact of her life, while filling in all the opulent details in between. If you want to know who Chanel was and why she is still so important today, pick up this book. Now if they would only do a feature film treatment!

This book was extremely interesting to read. Considering Chanel's habbit of often lying about her past, many biographers had given up on trying to tell her story. That's probably why the book lacks reasoning behind certain facts of her life, although the author did the best he could to provide his own viewpoint about some of the unenswered questions. The book is wonderful and it leaves the reader with plenty of room to use his/her own imagination to reveal some of the mysteries behind Chanel's great genious.

As an enthusiastic admirer of Coco Chanel's style and of the fashions she created, I was excited to read this book. I was surprised to find out that Chanel was an immensely complex and interesting person, even aside from her creative life. She came from very humble beginnings, lived through two world wars, survived tragedies, heartbreaks, and scandals, and through it all, she worked hard to realize her dreams of success. She is someone whom even non-fashionistas can admire. She was tenacious and clever, and her innate sense of style came through in everything she did.

This book features wonderful photographs of Chanel, a handy index, and even a guide to the author's sources. For anyone who is even remotely interested in fashion, this book is a god-send. For everyone else, this book tells the story of a courageous and complicated woman who fought for her success and did things her own way. This was one of the best books I read in 2007, and I will definitely re-read it in 2008!

The biographer's research is incomplete. Example: although it is claimed that Chanel was devoted to her business designing women's clothes, no one is interviewed who actually worked with Chanel. The business was abruptly shut down by Chanel after her employees went on strike in the late 30's. The single tidbit the author provides is that one of Chanel's employees, who had been with her since the infancy of her store, quit when Chanel refused to give her a raise. Many of the employees openly wept when they learned that this devoted employee was gone. Chanel took up with an officer in the german army during WWII. Was she a collaborator with the Petain government ??? Did she benefit from her cooperation with the germans during the war? The author is interested in presenting Chanel as a likeable person. I wonder how accurate this is.

I agree with the other 2 reviewers. This book is very difficult to follow and the author jumps from character to character and topic to topic too frequently. The pictures are nice, but I feel the author could have done a better job at creating more excitement and interest for the reader.

This biography was well-researched and competently done, but unfortunately while Coco Chanel is certainly famous her life story just is not that interesting. Growing up in an orphanage, Chanel translated her good looks and sexy character to affairs with rich, aristocratic men who gave her the capital and support to start her own botique to sell hats to the rich ladies who were part of her circle of acquaintances. From that auspicious beginning, her ascent was assured. The aftermath of World War II wasn't particularly kind to her (she would have been jailed for consorting with her German lover, except she threatened to reveal that all the rich were consorting with Germans because it's in the nature of the rich to consort with anyone that could benefit or hurt them), and there was a quiet period in her life when she seemed to fade away. But most of her life Chanel has always dominated the top of the fashion world. That's great for her, but it doesn't make for a particularly entertaining story.

I did not enjoy this book and wished I did my own research on a better author to portray Coco Chanel. It was lengthy in boring details and never developed a true feeling for the subject matter. Coco lead an extremely captivating life - so I find it difficult to believe that someone could write such a book lacking in depth!

I really loved devouring this book. Miss Gabrielle Coco Chanel is one of the most fascinating women I have ever read about. She is one of the first feminist as far as I'm concerned. Thanks to her we are not wearing corsets and dresses everyday. The book opened up a whole new side of her that I didn't know, like her relationship with the Nazi German officer.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fashion and or history because its a real page turner.

I was very interested in reading about Chanel's life, her work and her clothing. This book was a recounting of a bunch of facts, the people who were around her and very little on what Chanel really did in the design field. She stayed in bed until noon, and yet she worked very hard at her business? It didn't quite tell what she did at her business, and that is what I really wanted to read about. I had to force myself to continue reading as I found it extremely boring.

We chose "Chanel: A Woman of Her Own" for our bookclub. The life story of Chanel is very, very interesting. However, I found that the rather convoluted style of writing by this author made it hard to read. I found myself often reading a sentence over again several times simply to discern what the author was trying to say. I believe there must be other biographies of Chanel out there that are better!