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Welcome to the GuiltTrips podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Lockhart. As a goldsmith and

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gemologist, I'll be speaking 24 carat on all things jewelry, metals, and gems. Join

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me plus a few friends to demystify both materials and designs as your private jeweler. Let's

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tune in on these topics and get golden. The legacy of Chanel is widely recognized, but

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seldomly well known. The reason I am choosing her is to support my argument that I recently

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made with a colleague in branding where I said that women are rarely great business

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people but almost always excellent branding agents. While that comment could seem inflammatory,

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there's a reason why this seems to fall naturally into each gender's latent expertise. It is

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nature and nurture. However, Madame Coco happened to have the rare gift of mastering the expertise

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of both business and branding. A girl born in a poor house who lost her mother by age

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11, raised in a religious order, and began her education at age 12 would become the icon

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of fashion design and the perfect case study of congruent product sweets. Let's begin

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dissecting her legacy within the formula of quote, what problem did she solve? It originated

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in recognizing that the role for women was changing at the turn of the century. Restrictive

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garments, things like corsets and bustles, the hoop skirt, elaborate lace-up dresses,

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these were not going to enable the demands of life in the industrial era. Given that

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Coco grew up having learned how to sew, she was able to find employment as a seamstress.

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Extra money was made singing at a cabaret. Why is this important? Because it was a formative

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moment as far as exposure. Sometimes a vision is a sum total of the elements that we participate

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with. So while she's singing in a cabaret, she's interacting with ladies' costuming

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and the patrons, the male cavalry. The former was sporting a visual, a story, a look, and

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a ladder was wearing a workable uniform. Pursuing stage work took her to a resort town for a

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season. And here she would not only accept that she wasn't cut out for stage stardom,

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but it was also to be around the lifestyle of spa and relaxation and leisure. Another

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critical moment in her arc into design domination was that as she returned home, she would be

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exposed to equestrian and hunting lifestyles through a romance that she had. That romance

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would gift her three key items, dresses, diamonds, and pearls. Her next affair brought her into

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contact with the English upper class taste, and she would become financed by this lover.

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Having obtained her millinery license, which means she's allowed to design and create

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hats, her small shop would gain growth after being featured on stage and offstage by the

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same actress in fashion magazines. Chanel decided to expand into fashion because she

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had a vision for female leisure in sport, and soon she was following the wealthy that

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were exiled post World War One. Far away from home, still having means, yet missing indigenous

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affluence and aesthetic, she rose to the occasion for the expatriates. Now so it goes, part of

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her winning formula would be expand into trends and follow the money. The pillars that she

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would establish early for both herself and her brand would be design, reinventing materials,

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function, and fashion, the last part meaning or being synonymous with elegance. This would

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anchor strong identity, which would allow her to be so very fluid through different elements,

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collections, and expressions of her ideas. As far as her being an icon unto herself,

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her free spiritedness, her disruption of tradition, and her answering a call made by an entire

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generation and gender unbeknownst to them were the key ingredients of innovation. She really

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had a vision. Knowing her audience, she had a sympathy and a sensitivity towards women

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outgrowing the role of the generation before them. And lastly, strategic networking. She

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knew how to have professional alliances and do adjacent business. Something that's very

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near and dear to my heart is she knew how to recycle a chapter even if it was a failure

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for her. As much as she wowed in auditions when she went on stage, she had very mediocre

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singing abilities. She would go back to the stage world and eventually the film world,

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reintroduce herself as somebody of equal importance, one who could style the star power. She

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brilliantly found influencers in high society and became very adept at getting into the

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orbits of both wealth and circulation. She was shrewd when it came to adaptability.

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Things were changing. Signs of the times were both fast and furious. The turn of the century

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had led to World War One, had led to the roaring twenties, had led to depression, had led to

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World War Two. She was keen to notice and be responsive to social behaviors and movements

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through so many quick changes in such a short period of time. As much as it would be easy

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to call her an extreme opportunist, she did maintain a certain sense of integrity and

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honor. When the Second World War broke out, she said it was not a time for extravagance

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and chose to close her shop, which had grown to the woman power of 4,000 employees. It

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was here in the midst of the Second World War that she began to renegotiate her presence

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in her industry, and it was time to resurrect her branding and marketing intelligence. Chanel

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had already become a household name in three different ways in the opinion of the public,

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which is how reputation is built. Chanel had strength. Chanel had recognizable. And what

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would eventually be most important was Chanel had identity. We see this importance in the

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secondary market. The access to luxury in uncertain economics allows the user or wearer

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to establish both sense and sensory worthiness, a brand and product that capture those three

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elements will always have a timelessness simply by association as well as the experience

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when in use by the wearer. Like Elsa Peretti, Coco Chanel elevated quote unquote lesser

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materials, whereas Tiffany and company watched sterling silver become a couture component

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in the world of jewelry design. Chanel had done something quite similarly with jersey

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material, which was incredibly affordable for a beginning designer. And its original

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intention was for male undergarments. I find this to be very timely with the boyish trend

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that would surge in the boring twenties. And she does have a knack for being just right

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ahead of a trend. Now where does this lead her with jewelry and was jewelry just for

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the wealthy as times were so volatile? According to her, absolutely not. Chanel may have climbed

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the upper crust mountain and brought it down into the middle classes, something that is

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so close in nature to what Elsa did when she opened a very similar door. Chanel decided

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to combine fine and fashion jewels so that she could expand her design ideas. She admitted

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that it was incredibly tasteless to walk around in millions. However, there was a brazenness

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as well as a whole lot of look if you could flaunt your fakes. Where she began to both

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loop back to her formative influences and also contrast her original experiences is

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that her apparel would stay understated in its structure. As far as accessories, Coco

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went all in. They were opulent and at worst bold. Unlike her clothing that embraced progressiveness

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and forwarded the timeline, in jewelry, she used classic arrows for her adornments. The

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Egyptian portfolio, Byzantine design, medieval creation, each of these empires would be reinterpreted

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into her own. Chanel's jewelry pieces could transform. She would challenge the status

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quo yet again of the male artistry for women that had existed up until her entrance into

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that arena. She executed her genius and utilitarianism which was unrivaled by either gender. Her

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looks embodied three adjectives. Creative, experimental, and worldly.

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While Chanel was nothing less than prolific, the designer who gave us dresses, suits, hats,

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handbags, perfumes, perfume containers, and bejeweled embellishments. It's that last

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category where there seems to be a method or pattern. There were certain symbols that

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she was deeply attached to and created endless versions and iterations as a result of having

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a core collection of raw elements that would become refined works. The Maltese cross, the

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chameleon flower, a star, often as a comet, the moon, obviously the sun, her initials,

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a ribbon, a feather, and a lion to honor her zodiac sign of Leo. Not only would she craft

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refined materials, but she would blend in fashion components as well. Gripois, which is a glass,

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was an homage to the church and orphanage that she grew up in. To this day, we still

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see an endless loop and spiral of this core collection of artistic components that are

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found in nature. And to close out my talk on Coco Chanel and finish my argument for her

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brilliance as both profound businesswoman and second to none in branding, I will sum

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up how easy it is for me to recognize her through the lens of iconography because I grew up

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watching Madonna, a fellow Leo, do something so very similarly. The mastery of symbolism

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to float through endless iterations and mediums and materials transcends time and also is

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the economy of motion for somebody's own creativity and vision when you don't have

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to keep reinventing the wheel if what you've decided to assign yourself is limitless permutation

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on celestial bodies, a simple flower, a wild animal, the letters of your own name, a religious

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glyph, my fascination with her superstardom, her impeccable expression, and the fortune

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of the right time at the right place for the right people is beyond fascinating. How does

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one dominate the sport of business with the art of branding? For me, Coco solved one quite

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impersonally. She was a penultimate entrepreneur and in almost an ambidextrous way, her branding

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captured the spirit of the user and gave them a sense of self with such intimacy. It was

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an opus of personalization. Will we see somebody this adept at both business and branding again

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in this lifetime? Perhaps she really was a shooting star, a Haley's Comet, once and

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only once, but the playbook, the pattern, and the purpose lives on. If I'm being honest,

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it's her influence that helped me create this podcast and to strike a balance with my love

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for media, which is incredibly impersonal, and my obsession with storytelling, which

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is designed to touch all of us, mind, heart, and hopefully soul.