Friday, April 29, 2011

Desing* + Design* (for Design*)

I know a beautiful brown-haired Pointer of delicate sensibilities and exquisite taste. Her name is Coco. Her ears perk up when there's something in the air, but she herself never puts on airs. She likes to be comfortable, but enjoys looking good. (Does Chanel make a little black dress for dogs?) Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was born in 1883 in Saumur, France. Wikipedia describes her as "a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion." When Gabrielle was twelve years old, her mother died of tuberculosis and her father deserted the family. She was placed in the care of a local orphanage, where she learned how to be a seamstress. At age 18, she started singing in circuses and cabarets and adopted the name "Coco," which was perhaps a reference to one of the songs in her repertoire; Chanel informed The Atlantic magazine that her name was short for coquette, the French word for "kept woman." Some Coco's are well worth keeping—despite, in Chanel's case, having a fundamental design flaw: an unfortunate anti-Semitism. There were 23 cases of Desing* + Design* (for design*) discovered in OhioLINK today.

(Coco Chanel, 1920, from Wikipedia.)

Carol Reid

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