20th century fashion draws it’s roots from one place, Paris, and from one pioneering lady in particular, Coco Chanel. Born in 1883, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, revolutionalised French fashion with her pursuit of simplicity and elegance and opened her first shop on the Rue Cambon in 1910. However, fashion before Chanel meant women being laced into whalebone corsets to create an S-bend shape, a highly painful process followed by layers of lace, frills, feathers and big hair to achieve an almost deformed appearance. This appearance was penned the look of a ‘Gibson girl’, from American fashion illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson’s, work and was to epitomize the fashions of the early twentieth century, actress Camille Clifford exemplifying the image. However, with the arrival of Coco Chanel on the scene, her pioneering views were to change all that and is quoted herself as saying ‘Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury’, the fussy updo’s and dresses were soon to be a thing of the past.