What is style? The RAE dictionary includes up to thirteen meanings of the word, being a “taste, elegance or distinction of a person or thing”. Taste, elegance and distinction, is there anything more relative? And yet, that “fashion is fleeting, but style is eternal” we have heard various designers say, from Ralph Lauren to Yves Saint Laurent.

It will be important, because artists, it girls, socialites, in short, all those who have lived to rise above vulgarity, have said something about this very liquid concept. For Audrey Hepburn, each had their own, and when she found it she had to stick with it. An icon of elegance, she found it in sober and minimalist clothing, the most in keeping with her sensitive and delicate personality.

It’s the look she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), with her hair up, some pearls and that little black dress designed by Coco Chanel. The dressmaker had introduced him in 1926, but with the premiere of the film he became popular again.

Not only among the opulent people. Actually, there is a lot of Chanel in the way of dressing of ordinary women, from then until today. It is true that his was sewing for the rich, but other manufacturers copied it over and over again.

It seems crazy, because of the intellectual property thing, but she didn’t care in the least. On the contrary, as she explained to French television in 1959, she lamented the persecution by the big firms of tailors who sold their creations at lower prices. After all, there is no point in making a model if no one is going to see it. Even if they were wearing crude imitations, or made of cheap materials, it was still good news that women wanted to copy their style, which in the end seemed to him the important thing.

Wow if they copied it. Women’s trousers, suits and trench coats, solid colours, sailor sweaters, low or non-existent heels, rectilinear dresses or boyish short hair… everything that is normal today was not normal in 1913, when he opened his store in Deauville (Normandy).

For this reason, answering our question involves talking about Gabrielle, Coco, because of the nickname she used in her days as a singer in a cabaret. When she began tailoring, women had not yet escaped the customs of the Belle Époque. What’s more, since haute couture was invented – experts say that in the time of Queen Marie Antoinette – the paradigm had always been the same.

The important thing was to look, and the least important was comfort. Hence the corsets, the feathered headdresses, the impossible hats or the skirts, which, if already flared were uncomfortable, would be even more so when they became narrow. At the beginning of the 20th century, someone came up with the idea of ​​attaching a garter to women at calf height, forcing them to walk in small steps. Jokingly, the locked skirt was said to be a “speed limit skirt”.

So Gabrielle had the audacity to sell them jodhpurs and turtlenecks as well, thinking at first they would wear them for sports. Until very recently, it would have been something strange for women to practice sports, but the economic and social optimism of the Belle Époque had extended leisure to the other half of the population, hitherto excluded.

A legend that is difficult to confirm even assures that it was Chanel who popularized tanning when she returned from a vacation in 1923. That of the young ladies looking like porcelain dolls was over; now being rich meant having fun, moving around and letting the sun burn your skin.

Hence their sweaters or the famous t-shirts with sailor prints, in short, their entire collection was designed to restore their freedom of movement. “I have given them real arms, real legs, sincere movements and the ability to laugh and eat without feeling bad about it,” she once said.

And besides, her clothes were more elegant than the old ball gowns. As The New Yorker magazine published then, one fine day in 1913 the ladies of Deauville discovered that Chanel clothes were much more refined than theirs.

He had the intelligence to perceive that, sometimes, what ages the most is the same thing that makes one rich. As he said in the 1959 interview, in those years it was a common misconception that sophistication depended on the amount of capes, headdresses, jewelry, and embroidery one put on. “Women dress a lot, but they are rarely elegant,” she settled.

Her little black dress, for example, could hardly be more simplified, and since 1926 nothing has detracted from the zenith of simple elegance. Even the color is. Black, as were the habits of the nuns at the Aubazine orphanage where he spent his adolescence. Many critics believe that the sobriety of this Cistercian abbey was at the bottom of many of its designs.

Avoiding variegated colors and loud patterns was the hallmark of the house. Proof of this are the famous two-tone low-heeled shoes, or the 2.55 bag, which continues to be a bestseller.

The practical does not go out of style, and that they wanted to retire Chanel more than once. Especially after World War II, when suspicions of collaboration with the Nazis forced her into exile. In addition, in 1947 Christian Dior presented his Corolle line, inaugurating what became known as the New Look. After the war, which with its restrictions of fabric made the models resemble uniforms, the public craved long skirts and tight waists, opulence.

Coco rebelled against what seemed to her a regression to the customs of the 19th century, and in 1954 she returned in style with her tweed suit (a woolen fabric native to Scotland). Her competitors accused her of being out of date, and yet she took stores across the United States by storm.

It was a feminine take on the masculine suit: simple, streamlined, and straight-lined. In a way, it was made for women who wanted to exhibit carefree intelligence. The most famous is the one worn by Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which, despite her bloodstains, she did not remove from her so that everyone could see what had been done to her husband.

Some would say that the style is to have confidence in oneself. Perhaps, but if we talk about style in the image, it is best to reread what Coco Chanel said.