Gabrielle Chanel and cinema, a film celebrates the partnership - Lifestyle

On the red carpet, on the big screen, through outfits made ad hoc or chosen from the archives, in the films dedicated to its founder and in those made by Karl Lagerfeld,

Thus the maison becomes the main sponsor of the Villa Medici Film Festival in Rome, scheduled until September 18, where it presented a film that tells the close link between Chanel and the big screen.

Close to many artists, Gabrielle Chanel came into contact with the world of cinema in Monte Carlo, in the summer of 1930. Through the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, she met

.

In an attempt to revive the American film industry, weakened by the 1929 crisis, the tycoon asked Coco to turn his stars into fashion icons.

Gabrielle and her friend Misia Sert left for America in 1931 and reached Los Angeles aboard a sumptuous white rented train.

    Upon arrival they were greeted by

and the newspapers published the title ″ Two Queens Meet ″.

Marlene

, who later became friends with her, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, George Cukor, Claudette Colbert and other stars also wanted to meet her.

The first trip to the United States was a triumph.

"It's a new chapter in my career starting today," she confided to the Los Angeles Examiner on March 17, 1931.

    The experience was short-lived: the studies did not appreciate the sober style that was in contrast with the Hollywood vision of glamor.

But Gabrielle had discovered what a film dress was together with the concept of photogénie, which she would forever integrate into her couturière work. 

   While Hollywood didn't understand her style, French cinema listened to her.

Gabrielle met

who was looking for a dress for Harbor of Mists: ″ A movie like this doesn't need a dress: a raincoat, a beret, that's all! ″ She decreed.

Years later, at the request of her friend

in 1961,

: ″ When I wore my first Chanel - he revealed - I realized that I would never want anything else.

Chanel is a couturier like no other.

Because everything is organized coherently, logical: in the way we say Doric order or Corinthian order, there is a Chanel order, with its reasons, its rules, its rigor.

It is an elegance that satisfies the mind even more than the eyes. "    

Chanel's charm found

Its simplicity corresponded to the world of emerging directors and their actresses, such as

who will wear the maison's creations for several In 1960, Alain Resnais called Chanel to dress

Last Year in Marienbad.

Chanel Haute Couture collections, paving the way for a new approach to costumes in films, more in line with reality.

In 2018 Chanel supported the restoration of Alain Resnais' masterpiece, presented at the Venice Exhibition on September 5th.

Gabrielle Chanel has made friends with

the.

Karl Lagerfeld also made deep friendships with numerous actresses and directors, some of whom he has also acted with.

In 2015 he chose Cinecittà studios as the theater of the Métiers d'art Paris in Rome collection.

In 1989, after Sofia Coppola had done an internship in the Studio together with her designer, her father, Francis Ford Coppola dressed her boys in New York Stories in Chanel.

The modernity of the Chanel allure is combined in many other projects, including Pedro Almodóvar's High Heels (1992) in which Victoria Abril wears a Chanel dress from start to finish, and Callas Forever by Franco Zeffirelli (2002).

Finally, a close friend of Gabrielle Chanel, presented by Luchino Visconti, Zeffirelli found in Lagerfeld the perfect ally to dress Fanny Ardant.