Influence of Chanel is spotlight of NY exhibit

NEW YORK - If the colour black seems to have an uncanny hold on the world of fashion, a new exhibit may shed some light on who is responsible.

A show displaying the fashion of Chanel, one of the most influential and recognizable fashion houses of the 20th century, debuts this week at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

French designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, who died in 1971, is considered to have transformed fashion by freeing women from corseted silhouettes and dressing them for modernity in relaxed and practical looks.

"Coco Chanel revolutionized the ideals of dress at a time when women's aspirations and lives were changing dramatically," said Philippe de Montebello, the museum's director.

Chanel introduced the "little black dress" in the 1920s, creating a fashion staple that every stylish woman would have in her closet for any occasion at a moment's notice.

She gave black its immutable role in sartorial design when she declared: "These colours are impossible. I am going to put all these women in black; it still reigns as black obliterates everything else."

The exhibit is filled with signature looks by Chanel - tweed jackets with round necks and contrasting cuffs and collars; two-toned pumps and sling-backs; lacy evening gowns; black quilted satin bags; gilt chain accessories and ropes of pearls.

"Women, in my youth, did not look human," she once said.

"I gave them back their freedom; I gave them real arms, real legs, movements that were authentic and the possibility to laugh and eat without, necessarily, having to faint."

She also designed one of the best-known perfumes, "Chanel No. 5," the first to carry a designers name and said to be the only thing Marilyn Monroe wore to bed.

Karl Lagerfeld has held the design helm at Chanel since 1983.

So priceless are some of the pieces in the exhibit that Irini Cherniakhovsky, who restores vintage haute couture and worked on the neckline and sleeves of a Chanel gown on display, said the bottom of the dress had been encased in a protective bag while she worked.

"Beautiful, beautiful," she said at its unveiling as she peered at every angle. "I didn't see the whole dress before."

The exhibit opens to the public on Thursday and runs until Aug. 7 at the museum's Costume Institute.

- REUTERS