What Makes Great Leaders Great: Management Lessons from Icons Who Changed the World

CHAPTER 10

Understand Profit; Strive for Independence

LEARNING FROM

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) maintained that fashion ought to be comfortable and chic. She espoused this guiding principle at a time when the notion was totally alien to the fashion world. Accordingly, in 1916 she made the first ever proper clothes out of jersey, a material that had previously been deemed good enough only for men’s underwear. In 1918 she went on to create the first women’s pajamas, a previously inconceivable notion because during the first part of the twentieth century it was still self-evident that men’s and women’s clothing should ...