Word: chanelled
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...decade her name has been little more than a memory borne on the elusive scent of a perfume now made by someone else. Yet, during the 1920s, when Paris was still the uncontested capital of haute couture, the unchallenged queen regnant of Paris fashion was petite, disdainful Gabrielle ("Coco") Chanel. A bored, restless, country-bred orphan who fled to the city at 17 with no capital beyond her native Auvergnate shrewdness, Chanel had parlayed a flair for simple elegance into a million-dollar fashion business whose headquarters was the distinctive salon at 31 Rue Cambon, Paris...
...Chanel's first acts as a fashion arbiter was to tear down the monstrous constructions of net and feathers that crowned women's heads and set in their place simple hats. From this radical start, she went on to order the fashionable women of three continents into the turtleneck sweaters of the apaches, to expose their knees and suppress their curves. The New Look of the '20s was the look of Coco Chanel; from it and the sale of dresses, hats, perfumes, handbags, junk jewelry and almost anything else that fashionable women chose to buy, Coco herself...
...struck-in the form of Elsa Schiaparelli. The struggle lasted ten years. In 1938, almost overnight, the women of Paris, followed sheeplike by the women of the world, turned from Coco to the invader from Italy, with her exaggerated feminine conceits, her tassels, her flaming colors and "parachute" silhouettes. "Chanel wanted the tricot sailor frock with the long sweater, the short skirt," says Schiaparelli. "I took the frock. I altered the line . . . Voilà! Chanel ees feeneesh...
...where he is still very much the boss. Outwardly, but only outwardly, American business has become strongly feminized. Industrial giants get down on their knees before the woman shopper, promising to love, honor and obey. The U.S. office landscape is full of wire bras, pancake makeup, and clouds of Chanel No. 5 rising from filing cabinets. Of the total U.S. labor force of 63 million, nearly one-third are women, twice as big a proportion as 60 years ago. Nevertheless, there are not enough top women executives in the U.S. today to form a medium-sized chorus line...
...testing the 30-odd ingredients of a perfume such as Chanel No. 5, not all the smells that waft up to the Great Nose are pleasant. To "fix" the perfume by uniting other ingredients, perfumers use such sour or fetid-smelling substances as musk, castoreum (made from beavers' testicles), ambergris (a secretion in the sperm whale intestine), and civet glands. Explains Beaux: "Pepper and salt don't taste pleasantly when taken alone, but they enhance the taste of a dish." Beaux gives each essence the nose test because some scents will last after a week of exposure, while...