I just finished watching the movie Coco Before Chanel. Before watching the film, I didn’t really know anything about her besides the fact that she was a French fashion designer and founder of the famous fashion brand Chanel. Being a lover all of things design, I can’t help but feel inspired after seeing her tremendous influence in modern fashion and her vision for simplifying garments. When the bright colors, prints and heavy embroideries dominated fashion, she believed that the there needed to be a balance between the beauty of the body and the dress itself.

She had a vision for taking away the clutter of heavy ornaments, focusing on the design of garments that exemplified the body itself. The fabric cuts of her dresses flattered the figure rather than distort the natural body shape. Her style was of uncluttered simplicity, incorporating only what mattered the most. It just made sense and no one saw it but her.

She once said:

Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.

Brilliant. Inspirational. Her design thinking makes me want to take all the complicated things in the world and strip everything down until only it’s true beauty is shown.