COCO CHANEL Doll Project

Katerina Stravinsky : "You don't like colour, Mademoiselle Chanel?"

Coco Chanel : "As long as it's black."

I was assigned to make a costume for a Barbie doll by my teacher for my Contemporary History class. The costume can be chosen by ourself as long as it's related to the subject and the period of history that we chose.

Since I chose a costume during the Cold War (1945-1963) era, I chose Coco Chanel as my icon, and made her costume.

Technically, I didn't make the actual garment since we can give them to seamstresses. And the barbie house was also not made entirely by me. I only made the carpet, paint the lining on the wall, paint the furniture and made the photographs. The one who actually hammered and paint the box was my grandpa's employee.

So, to give you more visualization of what I was talking about, here goes :)

So, basically this is the simple house that I made. It was inspired by Chanel's black and white villa in the movie "Coco and Igor."

This is the whole look of the house and the Coco Chanel doll. I was actually extremely proud with my work. It may not be the best, but this is my favorite work up until today :)

The right wall was covered by photographs of Chanel's legacy, muse, products and herself.

The left wall was covered by photographs of the fashion industry during that era, dominated by Christian Dior's "New Look" and Jackie O's historical Chanel Suit.

The back wall was covered by a victorian frame of Coco Chanel's photographs. And look at the rug that I made! It's made out of faux fur, so it's nice to touch that :p

XOXO

Gaby in Wonderland