BY WOMEN, FOR WOMEN

Women make the world go round. And while we love to celebrate their achievements during Women’s Month, it’s extra important to keep that support going every other day of the year, too. Today, we're sharing the stories of 4 fantastic women to keep you inspired.

Born in Paris, around the turn of the 20th century, Madame Grès (nee Germaine Émilie Krebs, AKA Alix Barton, Alix) pursued sculpture before turning her interests towards fashion. Grès was initially a hat maker, but her eye for design soon propelled her into haute couture dressmaking. By the 1930s, Grès had made a name for herself and by the end of her career she counted a number of famous women in her client list, including: Wallis Simpson - the Duchess of Windsor, Princess Matilda of Greece, Paloma Picasso, Grace Kelly, Marella Agnelli, Marie-Helene de Rothschild, Edith Piaf, Jacqueline Kennedy, Dolores del Río, Barbra Streisand, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo. 

During the German occupation of France in World War II, Madame Grès was ordered to design stark, utilitarian clothing for the German officers and dresses for their wives, but she bravely refused and continued to design sumptuous dresses in the red, white and blue of the French tricolor flag. Both her refusal to design for the wives of occupying officers, and her refusal to design drab garments, played a part in the forced closing of her design house.

After the war, Grès began to design her famous Grecian goddess gowns in the 1930s; her quick return to fashion was a mark of perseverance, bravery, and success. She truly came into her own by designing the pgowns that championed simplicity and the liberty of movement and were designed with the wearer in mind: the body was to shape and mold the dress, not the other way around.

With her house thriving in the 1950s and 1960s, she introduced her perfume Cabochard (which translates to “pigheaded”). Years after, she created her first ready-to-wear collection in 1981.

Grès’ approach to her art informed the singularity of her genius. But her death, like her life, was shrouded in mystery. While it was reported to the fashion press falsely in 1994, her actual passing a year earlier was kept secret by her daughter. Appreciation for Grès’ work has allowed her most essential pieces to be preserved by time, allowing her commitment to the couture she loved and her legacy to stay alive.

On August 19, 1883, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel whom, one day, the world would know by the eponymous name of Coco Chanel, was born. Though current day we know Chanel as an iconic luxury name, the designer's origins stemmed from a melancholy and grief-stricken childhood. She experienced the premature death of her mother, the abandonment by her father Henri-Albert Chanel—a street vendor by profession—and years in the custody of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, in Aubazine. There she was surrounded by women dressed only in austere clothes, strictly white and black, and the rigorous architecture of the abbey, yet ironically, it is precisely here that Gabrielle got inspired with the antithesis of the opposing colors and the severity of the lines that eventually became the distinctive feature of her designs.

At the age of 18, Gabrielle Chanel found herself free to leave Aubazine and start living her life at the dawn of her youth. She began working as a sales assistant in the Maison Grampayre shop in Moulins, while simultaneously working as a singer in a cafe. One of her signature songs "Qui qu'a vu Coco?" is where she was rumored to have gotten her legendary nickname, Coco. Moving forward, the same cafés in Moulins led to her exposure and meeting prominent fashion executives such as Étienne de Balsan, a son of textile entrepreneurs, who invited her to move to a castle in Royallieu. After a six-year relationship, Étienne became not only a romantic partner but also her first financier.

While discovering Chanel's exceptional talent for creating hats, soon, the women in close proximity at Balsan's company started to also take notice and interest in her designs. Her creations quickly became highly sought-after, pushing her to move to Paris in 1908 and then to Deauville in 1914, to open her first shop. With her dedication, she then opened another shop in Paris at 31 Rue de Cambon in 1920. This being the pivotal moment for her career success, saw added and consistent exponential growth due to her ambition which was defined by her relentless desire for more. From this same unceasing desire to create more was the birth of her first and most famous perfume, Chanel No. 5, which can only be described as a timeless fragrance that, even today, is considered one of the best conceived.

During the Second World War, the designer found herself forced to withdraw from the fashion scene briefly, only to return in 1954. Yet in what is now an unsurprising turn of events, Chanel debuted her knitted suit, turning instantly into another house staple. Early fans of the classic suit included First Lady Jackie Kennedy who was frequently seen in these designs. Most notably, on the day of the murder of her husband John F. Kennedy, she wore a Chanel suit in a bright pink point knit.

On January 10, 1971, Chanel died in her suite at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris at the age of 87. For over 60 years, the Chanel suit, the little black dress, costume jewelry, trench coats, the quilted leather purse, turtlenecks, pants, peacoats and Chanel No.5 fragrance remain staples today, serving as a testament to Chanel’s enduring influence. She has forever changed international fashion and the concept of dressing the female body.

Quant was a self-taught designer, attending evening classes on cutting and adjusting mass-market printed patterns to achieve the looks she was after. 

Quant's aesthetic was influenced by the dancers, musicians and the powerful modernist approach that helped define London's youth culture in the late-1950s. Quant's first collections were strikingly modern in their simplicity and wearability. Unlike the more structured clothes still popular with couturiers, Quant wanted relaxed clothes suited to the actions of normal life. Pairing short tunic dresses with tights in bright, stand-out colors—scarlet, ginger, prune and grape—she created a bold, high-fashion version of the practical outfits she'd worn as a child at school and at dance classes.

Quant is often credited with inventing the decade's most iconic look: the mini skirt. Extremely short skirts and shift dresses became Quant's trademark, and were popularized by the era's most high-profile model, Twiggy, whose willowy figure helped turn super-short hemlines into an international trend. Mini-skirts and dresses were perfectly paired with Quant's tights and underwear range, one of the first lines produced using the Mary Quant name under license. Quant also created the “skinny rib” sweater (apparently inspired by trying on an eight-year-old's sweater for fun) and, in 1966 invented hot pants. Capitalizing on the 1960s' love affair with new materials, she was the first designer to use PVC, creating “wet look” clothes, and different styles of weatherproof boots in her footwear range, Quant Afoot.

On the same year, she was awarded an OBE and published her autobiography, “Quant by Quant”. In 1967, she opened her third shop in London's New Bond Street. By the end of the decade, Quant was UK's most high-profile designer and had achieved unprecedented reach in the market: it was estimated that up to seven million women had at least one of her products in their wardrobe.

As the decade advanced so did her ever increasing range of products, for the first time venturing into menswear, then stationery, spectacle frames and sunglasses, hats, mugs, wine, dressmaking fabrics, jewelry, umbrellas, and even carpets, paints, popwallpapers, beds, and many more.

In 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller introduced what became known as bloomers—the first pants-like clothing for women. The initial designs consisted of a short jacket on top, paired with a knee-length skirt, which partially covered up loose “Turkish” pantaloons inspired by a trip to Europe. This garment got its name from Amelia Bloomer, who was the editor of the first newspaper for women, The Lily, and regularly wore the baggy trousers that gathered at the ankle in her many speaking appearances in New York City. 

Other early advocates of bloomers included revolutionary women like Mary Edwards Walker, the first female surgeon in field duty during the Civil War, as well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leader in the American women’s rights and suffrage movements. 

Despite the popularity bloomers gained during this era of social reform, the innovation stirred up significant controversy, wearers were publicly ridiculed, and women resorted to wearing them only while riding bicycles or doing other forms of exercise, or in the privacy of their homes.  

In 1910, American women were briefly permitted to sometimes wear pants again in public when they took over jobs traditionally held by men during World War I and World War II. 

In 1930, despite frequent photographs at this time of actresses like Katharine Hepburn wearing pants, Helen Hulick, a teacher from California, was arrested for wearing pants in 1938. She was testifying in court (against men who burglarized her house) and chose to wear slacks for comfort. The judge found her attire inappropriate and ordered her to return the next day wearing a dress. But she did not. She was held in contempt of court and briefly jailed, sparking discussions about gender norms and women's rights, yet signaling that there was still progress to be made.

The Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s marked a pivotal moment in history, as women across the United States organized for gender equality. At the forefront of this movement was the fight for autonomy over one's body and choices, including clothing. Pants became symbols of freedom, independence, and the rejection of traditional gender norms. Pat Nixon was the first American Lady to wear trousers in public, and Title Nine amendments declared that dresses could no longer be required of girls and women at schools, colleges, and university campuses.

Despite the progress of the Women’s Liberation Movement, it wasn't until three decades later – 1993 – that women were permitted to wear pants on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Hillary Clinton became the first woman to wear trousers in an official American First Lady Portrait. 

There have been so many of such enigmatic women. They brought out style and feminism in fashion with grace, finesse and courage. Their strength and tenacity have changed the course of history, and we are privileged to be beneficiaries of their lasting legacies.