Coco Chanel: The woman who dressed the world, with Rhonda Garelick

In conversation with Pamela Druckerman

Coco Chanel, born into poverty in rural France, was – by age 40 - a multimillionaire and a household name. Her Chanel Corporation is still the highest-earning privately owned luxury goods manufacturer in the world. You can see Chanel’s taste reflected in what ordinary women wear: little black dresses, flat shoes, costume jewelry and cardigan sweaters. Yet her clothes also embody her own era, and were influenced by war, nationalism and social change.

How did Chanel do it? What was the woman herself really like? Rhonda Garelick, cultural commentator and author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History, will explain Chanel’s unique genius for absorbing the zeitgeist, and reflecting it back to the world in her designs.

Rhonda Garelick is dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory, at Parsons School of Design/The New School in New York. She’s the author of three books, and writes on fashion and cultural politics for New York Magazine, The New York Times and many other publications. Garelick received her B.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature and French from Yale.

Pamela Druckerman is the author of five books including Paris By Phone, a rhyming picture book for kids.