Tout savoir sur la vie de Coco CHANEL | Français COURANT. Sous-titres + transcription PDF.

Hello and welcome to episode 136 of the Fluidité podcast. The Coco Chanel seamstress, a timeless fashion icon known all over the world, revolutionized the industry with her bold style and visionary spirit. From her difficult childhood to her international glory, we will talk about the important facts of her life. So I invite you to discover the fascinating story of this pioneer and to plunge into the elegant and innovative universe of a French fashion legend. But for that, stay tuned! Before starting, I would like to talk to you about our VIP club. It's my Patreon page where you have the material to study my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have exclusive bonuses such as the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version, and you receive the content before the public. So everything to promote your immersion. The VIP club is also a large community with more than 350 French learners. We chat together every day on a private Telegram group. We do different activities in French twice a week, on video calls. So you can also practice your French, find or share resources with other learners from around the world and make friends. You will practice your French while having fun and it is crucial to stay motivated. To sign up for the VIP club, I leave you the link in the description on podcast platforms and on YouTube to join our VIP club on Patreon. You can stay as long as you want and come with pleasure. I often do promotions so don't hesitate to go see my Patreon page. Well, I did a poll in the community tab of my YouTube channel and you voted for Coco Chanel. Know that I have already done many episodes on the life of different personalities from different fields. So don't hesitate to listen to the other biographies available. So Gabrielle Chanel was born in August 1883 in Saumur, in the Pays de la Loire region. She didn't reveal much about her childhood, but we know that she felt alone and that she didn't really like her father. Twelve years after her birth, her mother died and her father abandoned little Gabrielle and her two sisters in an orphanage. Coco will never see him again and will consider herself an orphan. It seems that it is in the rough and austere environment of the orphanage that she learned about sewing and that she would have found a lot of inspiration for her future creations, therefore a sober universe and neutral colors. She will spend almost seven years of her teenage life there. In 1903, being skilled in her hands, young Gabrielle becomes a seamstress at her grandfather's house in Moulin, in Auvergne. But she dreams of a better future than a simple employee and at the age of 24, she begins to sing and perform in a concert café in the city. This is where Coco is overshadowed in relation to the title of a song she loved to sing. She will be spotted by a young lucky spectator named Etienne Balsan, who is dedicated to raising racing horses and makes Chanel discover this comfortable and mundane universe. It is from there that the seamstress undergoes her clothing revolution. Because at that time, women mounted horses in Amazon, that is to say, the two legs on the same side of the horse, so that their dress does not rise and their ankles are visible, especially not. But Chanel decides otherwise. She mounts horses in Califorchon, dressed in pants or polo like men, but like no other woman. She also creates hats very different from those of the time. She makes friends in this rather mundane and rather rich world, who become fans of her unique style in her genre, like a waitress, but always elegant and chic. So the waitress style is when a woman dresses like a boy. But her relationship with Etienne ends because she no longer loves him. That said, thanks to him, she will meet another lucky and cultivated man, the Englishman Arthur Cappelle, nicknamed Boy, whom she will fall in love with and who will be the man of her life. Boy sees the great potential of Coco and will help her become the great Chanel. He advises her and will push her to open her first Parisian boutique in 1909, by lending her the necessary funds. In her boutique, she makes her hats, and it is from this moment that her success will begin. Then in 1913, she opens a second boutique in Deauville and another in Biarritz in 1915, so she has a crazy success. Coco frees the woman while imagining a new silhouette. She shortens the dresses to reveal the ankles and the bottom of the calves, or removes the corsets, too constricting. The stylist creates simpler and more practical clothes, adapted to the daily life of the woman, becoming more dynamic. She buries an era and makes fashion change. Coco Chanel becomes the queen of Paris, having one of the most important sewing houses in the capital, with more than 300 workers. If you think of the French cliché, you are surely representing someone with a beret and a swimsuit. You know, this high-striped, horizontal, blue and white. At first it was a military garment, but Coco made it a fashion accessory. It was she who began to make a swimsuit and sell it in her Deauville boutique for her marine collection. The garment meets a huge success and even becomes luxurious. Her love story with Boye goes very well, but it ends brutally and tragically when on December 22, 1919, Boye Capel dies in a road accident. It is the tragedy for Coco Chanel that drives her crazy. And she says, either I die too, or I continue what we started together. The seamstress opts for the second option. She decides to overcome her great sorrow and pain and continue her professional career. Coco Chanel makes friends in the artistic world with whom she collaborates, such as Picasso, Stravinsky, Ravel, or even Misia Sert, who will be her muse, her Nigerian. She will then maintain a short relationship with the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich of Russia, who will inspire her with some creations, but above all, who will make her meet Ernest Beau. Ernest Beau is a perfumer who works for the Russian tsars, and they will together create a perfume, the famous Chanel No. 5. So why this number? In fact, Ernest presented Coco with two series of samples, numbered from 1 to 5 and from 20 to 24. And according to legend, she chose sample No. 5. The Russian perfumer asked Coco to find a name for the perfume. She replied that she launched her collection on May 5, so the 5th month of the year, to leave the perfume its number that will bring her luck. The perfume was launched in 1921, and indeed, as early as 1929, it will become the best-selling in the world, and in France of course, where all women want it. As for the bottle and its very rectangular shape, it would have been inspired by the whiskey bottle of her boy chapel to pay tribute to it. Today, Chanel No. 5 is the most famous perfume in the world and the second most sold in France. In 1924, Chanel begins a relationship with the Duke of Westminster, the richest man in England. Once again, it is inspired by the English masculine style, to bring it back to French feminine fashion, such as tweed jackets. The Duke is madly in love with Coco, he covers her with flowers and jewelry, offers her everything he can, but their relationship ends, so she will never be Duchess. In 1926, Coco Chanel creates the famous little black dress, which went against the trend of fashion, since black was a color reserved either for mourning, this feeling of sadness after the death of a loved one, or for house staff. It is a short and light dress, whose simple lines and dark color erase the feminine forms. Nowadays, this little black dress has become very glamorous, and it is worn by the biggest stars for big events or parades. Another huge success for Mademoiselle, the nickname of Coco Chanel. Chanel then leads about 4,000 workers at that time, but things will not go as planned. Indeed, these workers went on strike in 1936, during a national strike movement, to ask for better working conditions and a better salary. Coco accepts, but she will fire them all in 1939, when the Second World War begins, pretending that fashion is no longer suitable for this period. At the height of her glory, at the age of 56, she therefore closes her sewing house overnight, to devote herself to her perfumes and take refuge in Switzerland. She still keeps a room at the Ritz, where she lived, and where she has a relationship with a German Baron, which will create rumors of collaboration with the German forces, and we will even consider her anti-Semitic. In short, it is a somewhat troubled period in Coco's life. But she did not say her last word, and she will soon make her big comeback. After many years spent in Switzerland, in 1954 and aged 71, she recalls her teams to reopen her sewing house in Paris. She launches several essential and brand symbols, such as the tweed tie-dye. It is a set made up of a jacket and a skirt. But there will also be the famous beige and black scarves, and the famous mattress bag with the golden chain as a strap. If you search for a Chanel handbag on Google, it is the first you will see, it is called the 2.55, and it currently costs 4,700 euros minimum. I thought there was a price error, but not at all. During the show of her new collection, the French press criticizes her new creations, and considers her event as a fiasco, a total failure. On the other hand, the American press loves it, and thinks Coco Chanel is bringing a real revolution to fashion. The creator will then regain her power, and will impose her style on the entire planet. Many French and American actresses will wear her famous tweed tie-dye, such as Lee Stahler, Romy Schneider, Marilyn Monroe, or the wife of President Kennedy. In Dallas, in 1957, she even received an Oscar for fashion. In the 60s, we see the mini skirt appear. But Chanel is opposed to this fashion, and does not want to show the knees of women by saying that they are ugly. Then comes the hippie wave in 1968, which will break the codes of fashion, and Chanel will not appreciate it too much, and will lock herself in her work, more lonely than ever. On January 10, 1971, at the age of 87, she dies in her suite at the Hôtel Ritz, at 15 Place Vendôme in Paris. In the 80s, the stylist Karl Lagerfeld becomes the artistic director of Chanel, will help the brand to overcome its difficulties of the time, and will make it more famous than ever. Nowadays, Chanel is a haute couture house, but it also makes jewelry, bags, glasses, perfumes, makeup, care, etc. The brand is obviously world-famous, and there are shops in many countries that generate billions of euros in turnover. French fashion owes a lot to this great lady, Coco Chanel, who will remain an icon of the culture of our country. In any case, thank you all for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you learned a lot of French and a lot of culture as usual. By the way, rewrite in the comments the new vocabulary you learned. If you have stayed so far, the episode has interested you, so put a like. Do not hesitate to subscribe to my YouTube channel and to my podcast. And I'll see you soon!