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Vintage Chanel Jewelry

 














Vintage Chanel Jewelry



Vintage Chanel Jewelry






 Coco Chanel was a pioneering designer: her concept of the "Total Look"     proposed that individual pieces of clothing were not as important as the way in which they were accessorized and worn.


 She was the first fashion designer, along with Elsa Schiaparelli, to make costume jewelry essential to her style ethos, and is sometimes even credited with coining the term "costume jewelry."





Vintage Chanel Jewelry
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel wove an intricately romantic version of her early history, claiming to have been born in France's rural Auvergne region in 1893 when she was in fact born in the Loire Valley town of Saumur ten years earlier.


 She trained as a seamstress and went to Paris to become a cabaret singer when she was 18, styling herself "Coco."





Chanel was shrewd and charismatic. She took wealthy lovers and, as her cabaret carcer faltered, developed her dressmaking skills and found the capital she needed to open her first Parisian boutique in 1912. Here, she promoted a chic new look for women that had simplicity and comfort at its core, doing away with the restrictive corsets of her forebears.






Vintage Chanel Jewelry



Chanel's unfussy designs provided a perfect canvas for accessories and she began to produce jewelry decorated with inexpensive imitation stones and pearls so that her clients could afford to accessorize and personalize many outfits.



These pieces were styled to emphasize their "faux" quality and worn to flout the convention of women using jewelry to define their status. Clients followed Chanel's lead in piling on strings of faux baroque pearls to create a glamorous, excessive look which was revolutionary.




Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Vintage Chanel Jewelry
By the 1920s, the fashion house was expanding and Chanel's jewelry lines extended to charm bracelets and jeweled belts, ropes, and gold-and-bead chains.




 Drawing on classical influences, her pieces featured clear and colored rhinestones and synthetic stones combined with real gems.





Vintage Chanel Jewelry
 They were designed to enhance her simple outfits, typified by the legendary "little black dress" of 1926—Chanel said she wanted to rid women of their frills. "Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance," she told Harpers Bazaar magazine in 1923.


Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Chanel was one of the leading names in Paris and worked with some of the great jewelers of the time. Notably, she collaborated with Maison Cripoix, whose designs featured "poured glass" stones. Gripoix specialized in pdte-de-verre, pouring glass into delicate brass frames to create rich Moghul- or Renaissance-style pieces. Chanel also worked with the Duke of Verdura, who had previously designed fabrics for her.

Together, they produced some of the company's most desirable, classic pieces, including enameled and jeweled Maltese cross cuffs.





After her 15-year self-imposed exile in Switzerland during and after World War II, Chanel was ready to face the world again. Her Parisian comeback in 1954 saw her reinstated among the stars of haute couture, and she won back her admirers with the Chanel suit and pea jackets worn with bell bottoms.


Vintage Chanel Jewelry


In this new era, Chanel worked with gold- and silversmith Robert Goossens from 1955 onward, creating iconic designs such as Byzantine-style crosses on long chains of pearls and beads. Goossens was enchanted by artifacts from Parisian museums, drawing his influences from Maltese and Renaissance works, Byzantine mosaics, and stained-glass windows. He combined artificial gems with real stones collected on his travels. Rock crystal was his favorite material, lending delicacy to inexpensive pieces.







Vintage Chanel Jewelry


Most desirable to collectors are Maltese cross cuffs and pins by Verdura, floral-inspired necklace and earring sets by Maison Gripoix, and the rosary-style beaded pearl necklaces made by Goossens, which achieved iconic status in the 1960s.






Vintage Chanel Jewelry
Coco Chanel was still working when she died in 1971, at the age of 87. The company struggled under several creative directors until
1983, when Karl Lagcrfeld became chief designer and started deconstructing the House of Chanel to modernize it. In a 1989 article for the New Yorker, fashion writer Holly Brubach accused Lagerfeld of desecrating the Chanel ethos—as symbolized by his brash overuse of the entw ined "CC" logo—but his energetic reconstruction relaunched the brand.








Vintage Chanel Jewelry


 Under his leadership, the company produced costume jewelry echoing earlier designs, including long, gilt chains with pearls and glass beads, notably red and green, Coco's signature colors. Lagerfeld's first collection for Chanel was launched in 1983 and he maintains creative control of the house today. In 2005, Chanel acquired the company founded by Robert Goossens.




Vintage Chanel Jewelry






The 1980s saw branded luxury goods become the ultimate must- haves, and fakes abounded. Chanel's poured-glass pins from this time make good collecting as they were hard to fake, due to the difficult manufacturing process. Collectors also seek rare early Vintage Chanel Jewelry in the original box. The box increases the value by at least 30 per cent.















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