Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, a feminist fashion designer also known as the iconic Coco Chanel, was a French fashion designer, who founded the fashion house called after her on 1909. She was active until she passed away on 1971. Chanel was considered a pioneer in the fashion industry, and contributed to the feministic movement through her designs. She is known as the one who led to the concession of the corset as an essential fashion item, since she designed simple and comfortable clothes for the modern woman. This approach was very revolutionary at the time, and she is therefore, the only woman, to appear in the list of "100 influential people of the 20th century" issued by the Time Magazine.
Until the 1980's, when Karl Lagerfeld added the Chanel CC lock, The Chanel bags had the Mademoiselle lock - a simple rectangular swivel lock, with the word Chanel written on the bottom. Though it is hard to imagine now days a Chanel Bag without the CC logo, it was not there in the beginning, today, the old buckle returned, like many brands that appreciate their origins, Chanel went back to the vintage look (maybe one of the reasons is the endless attempts to copy the CC buckle)!
