Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman - Softcover

Karbo, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0762764155 ISBN 13: 9780762764150

Publisher: Globe Pequot Press, 2011

Synopsis

NOW IN PAPERBACK! A modern look at the life of a fashion icon-with practical life lessons for women of all ages Delving into the extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of self-help book, exploring Chanel's philosophy on a range of universal themes-from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.

About this title

About the Author

Karen Karbo is a novelist, journalist, and witty, no-nonsense social commentator, and is the author of How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great, a biography-cum-guidebook the Philadelphia Inquirer called "an exuberant celebration of a great original." Karbo is also the author of Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost, the third installment in a trilogy about a seventh-grade girl detective who has a peculiar gift: self-confidence. Karbo's debut novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and all three of her novels have been named New York Times notable books. The Stuff of Life, her memoir about her father, was a People Magazine Critic's Pick and winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her work essays, reviews, and articles can be found in Outside, Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Redbook, More, Self, Entertainment Weekly, the New Republic, the Oregonian, and the New York Times. Karbo also hails from a family of designers. Her grandmother, Luna of California, was a well-known designer of couture in Los Angeles in the 50s, and her father was an industrial designer who in 1942 designed the hood ornament for the Lincoln Continental, still in use today. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

From the Inside Flap

Delving into the long, extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of book, exploring Chanel s philosophy on a range of universal themes from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.

Born in 1883 in a poorhouse in southern France to unmarried parents, Chanel was raised in a convent after her mother died when she was six and her father abandoned her. The nuns taught her to sew, and while working as a café singer in the early 1900s she began designing hats for fun. Her lovers included a wealthy English industrialist, who helped her set up her own millinery shop and steered his society friends her way.

Chanel grew up to be the woman who not only gave us the little black dress and boxy jackets, but also popularized pants for women and easy, practical clothes that allowed women a chic freedom they d never known before. In her strong-headed, elegant, opinionated, passionate, entirely French way, Coco Chanel helped bring women into the modern era. She was the only fashion icon to be named one of Time magazine s 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel is a captivating, offbeat look at style, celebrity, and self-invention all held together with Karbo s droll Chanel-style commentary and culled from an examination of Chanel s difficult childhood and triumphant adulthood, passionate love affairs, career choices, habits, eccentricities, and personal philosophies. Weaving Chanel s life story into chapter themes that subtly convey life lessons, and with Chesley McLaren s charming illustrations, it will leave the reader utterly entranced with, and inspired by, Chanel s amazing individuality, confidence, and determination.

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Delving into the long, extraordinary life of renowned French fashion designer Coco Chanel, Karen Karbo has written a new kind of book, exploring Chanel s philosophy on a range of universal themes from style to passion, from money and success to femininity and living life on your own terms.

Born in 1883 in a poorhouse in southern France to unmarried parents, Chanel was raised in a convent after her mother died when she was six and her father abandoned her. The nuns taught her to sew, and while working as a café singer in the early 1900s she began designing hats for fun. Her lovers included a wealthy English industrialist, who helped her set up her own millinery shop and steered his society friends her way.

Chanel grew up to be the woman who not only gave us the little black dress and boxy jackets, but also popularized pants for women and easy, practical clothes that allowed women a chic freedom they d never known before. In her strong-headed, elegant, opinionated, passionate, entirely French way, Coco Chanel helped bring women into the modern era. She was the only fashion icon to be named one ofTime magazine s 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel is a captivating, offbeat look at style, celebrity, and self-invention all held together with Karbo s droll Chanel-style commentary and culled from an examination of Chanel s difficult childhood and triumphant adulthood, passionate love affairs, career choices, habits, eccentricities, and personal philosophies. Weaving Chanel s life story into chapter themes that subtly convey life lessons, and with Chesley McLaren s charming illustrations, it will leave the reader utterly entranced with, and inspired by, Chanel s amazing individuality, confidence, and determination.

Edition details

• Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0762764155
• ISBN 13: 9780762764150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256