‘Welcome to our beauty blog’

Kicking off the autumn season at Detour we wanted to indulge in a little beauty therapy…

Tried, tested and conquered by us at the Detour beauty department we hope to tempt you with some of the newest additions to your cosmetic counter.

With beauty advice, product reviews and information on the latest hair and beauty brand you will find all things new and exciting here!

If there is anything else you would like to see in this department be sure to let us know…

Charlotte Winstanley
Fashion and Beauty Editor

The life of… Gabrielle Bonheur ‘Coco’ Chanel

She could’ve been cinematic inspiration any year – but this year seems tailor made for Coco Chanel. With the upcoming release of her biopic film – Coco avant Chanel and the recent release of Confessions of a Shopaholic, Coco proves that even after she’s gone, she is always en vogue.

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born into the poverty-stricken French working class in 1883 in North-western France. Her mother died when she was twelve and her father’s crippling lack of money forced him to put Coco and her six siblings into an orphanage run by nuns. It was from the nuns that she began to learn the trade of tailoring.

At eighteen, she left the orphanage and started work for a local tailor. She soon caught the attention of the notorious and infamous womanizer, Étienne Balsan. The seamstress and the playboy then embarked on a passionate love affair. Balsan lavished her with every imaginable luxury and it was from Balsan that she developed a taste for la vie de luxe.

She soon began designing hats as a hobby and eventually used Balsan’s money to set up a boutique in his Paris apartment selling fashionable jackets and coats. However, Chanel Modes soon flopped and Gabrielle was back where she started, which only flared her appetite for success.

Soon Balsan and Gabrielle split and she was penniless once again. In a world ruled by des hommes riche, Gabrielle knew that she, as a poor woman, would have to find a wealthy man to facilitate her rise to the top. With this in mind, she soon targeted Arthur Capel, Balsan’s former best friend. With his money she made her second attempt at opening a boutique, this time in Brittany.

This second boutique was a flying success for Gabrielle, who by now was using her self-fashioned nickname, Coco. Her hats enraptured famous French actresses who began wearing them on set. This caught the eye of the British and French aristocracy and it wasn’t long before Coco had her first major client – the well-connected and socially prominent Countess de Gounaut-Biron. Through the Countess, Coco established strong links with regular clients from the upper echelons of Anglo-Franco society including Vera Bates Lombardi, a member of the British Royal Family. Coco had spun for herself a web of superpower connections. It wasn’t long before she had struck the pages of French Vogue with what would be the most famous and most must-have fashion item of all time – the little black dress.

It was a simple calf-length number – a testament to Coco’s doctrine of ‘simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance’. Before the little black dress, currently termed the LBD, wearing black in public was a sign of indecency unless one was in mourning. But to Coco, a simple black dress was a woman’s uniform – an outfit suitable for any occasion depending on how it was accessorized. Following the LBD came the Chanel suit. It was a boxy black silk suit for women – quite masculine in its appearance with its sharp lines and shoulder pads. The androgyny of her designs was influenced by the many men she used on her ascension to success – fused with her feminist ideologies.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Coco closed down her boutiques as she thought it ‘was not a time for fashion’. She moved into the L’Hôtel Ritz Paris which she chose to be her home for the next thirty years. And it wasn’t long before she had to work her black widow’s charm on another man. This time however, her prey was a Nazi spy. She used her acerbic wiles to see to it that in German-occupied France, she would be permitted to continue living in L’Hôtel Ritz Paris.

However, in 1943, the Nazi spy forced Coco into a plot to assassinate Winston Churchill – a relative of Vera Bate Lombardi. Coco was made to invite Vera to Paris under the pretext of employing her. Vera, who was living in Italy at the time, declined and she was imprisoned by the Gestapo under the accusation of being a British spy. When the plot was uncovered after the war, Coco was arrested for war crimes but she summoned the influence of the British Royal Family to stop herself from being brought to trial.

With her image in France now soured due to her Nazi affiliations, she moved to Switzerland but returned to Paris after just nine years. In a direct snub to the French population who had shunned her, she targeted the American market and used her masculine clothes to battle with Christian Dior’s more feminine 1950s look which had dominated the market in Coco’s absence. She flourished there as she had done when she targeted Capel many years before. She died peacefully in her sleep at L’Hôtel Ritz Paris at the age of eighty seven. She is buried in Switzerland, her grave etched with her zodiac sign Leo – the lion.

Gabrielle Bonheur ‘Coco’ Chanel rose from obscurity to prominence to become one of the world’s first career women by using men as men have used women for centuries. To this day the House of Chanel is a driving force in fashion – a ‘super label’ that is always found at the finest of couture-worthy events. And yet, it seems that no Chanel creation, no pair of shoes or exquisitely tailored suit could can ever rival the ubiquity and then fail-safeness of her Little Black Dress.

The ever controversial… Mr Karl Lagerfeld

The renowned Karl Lagerfeld hit the headlines at the beginning of this year with his flippant remarks about some rather controversial subjects.

The designer who has worked for names such as Chloe, Fendi and Chanel, was asked about fur worn within the fashion industry.  It was his reply to such a widely reported subject that found him at the centre of a widely argued debate having said: “killing those beasts who would kill us if they could.”

Lagerfeld then went on to cause more uproar when he was asked on a radio show about size zero models.  Lagerfeld again gave his own opinion on the tiny models walking down the runway and tried to divert the issue with little luck and said: “the bigger issue is the zillions of fat people.”
Whilst his remarks may appear arrogant it is that confidence that has created such a power driven designer and entrepreneur and led him to be renamed by Vogue as the “unparalleled interpreter of the mood of the moment.”

Born in Germany in 1933, his childhood was where Lagerfeld’s love for design and fashion first began, spending time sketching and designing.  As well as this, he was well educated, learning French, Italian and English along with his native German which would later contribute to his love for cultural art.
In 1952 he emigrated to Paris where he studied informally to be a fashion designer with the intention of getting involved in the world of French Haute Couture.  During his time in Paris, at only 16 years of age, Lagerfeld sent one of his designs into an International Wool Secretariat competition; the judges included such names as Pierre Balmain and Hubert Givenchy.  This would be the start of his designing career as he received an award for the best coat sketch which consequently resulted in Pierre Balmain offering him a job in his couture house. This coincidentally happened to be the same competition in which Yves Saint Laurent was awarded best sketch for a dress.

From this he worked in several other design houses until he began working at Chloe in 1959, where he would stay for 19 years.  His work for Chloe was highly influential and it is suggested that it was his contribution to the label which brought it back into the limelight in the 60’s.  During his time at Chloe he also started designing furs for Fendi in 1965 and in 1975 launched his own company, Parfums Lagerfeld.
He designed independently from 1978, after finishing designing for Chloe, and he began designing haute couture at the House of Chanel where he would soon become Chanel’s head designer. By this time he had designed for three of the most dominant labels; Chloe, Fendi and Chanel.  It is argued that Lagerfeld made them what they are today. Known not only for his designs, Lagerfeld caused controversy when he named his Fendi collection “shaped to be raped” but overcame the criticism and received France’s Golden Thimble award for his Chanel Haute Couture collection.

More recently, in 2004, he collaborated for H&M’s first ever collaboration.  Over 1, 000 shoppers entered the H&M store in New York, 5th Avenue, to see the collection he had specially designed.
As well as his work with Chanel, Chloe and Fendi, Karl Lagerfeld is well known for his trademark appearance including a fan, a white ponytail and sunglasses.  In addition to his expertise in fashion, Lagerfeld runs his own publishing imprint, a bookshop in Paris and has several art and house collections, perhaps stemming from his cultural upbringing.

Whilst Lagerfeld has already achieved much more than most designers, in and out of the fashion industry, you may be hearing his name again this year as it has been reported that Cameron Diaz has asked him to design her wedding dress for her marriage to British model Paul Sculfor.  So keep a look out ladies!
Examples of Karl Lagerfeld’s work can be found at www.karllagerfeld.com

All that glitters…

This Christmas Costume jewellery steals the spotlight. The bigger the better… statement jewellery is BACK!

With all the twinkly lights on the tree this Christmas be sure to make yourself stand out with some sparkly decoration of your own.

This season is all about glamour, and what could be more glamorous than big, brash sparkly neck wear?

With the likes of Chanel show casing over sized neck wear, new designers such as Allumer are on top form with their statement neck wear, which in more ways than one spells out what the wearer is thinking! Read more

The Legend of the LBD

Coco Chanel introduced the first ‘LBD’ in 1926, of utterly simple design. Her fashion took the 20’s by storm with fresh, updated, new ideas, the usual being simplistic neutrals, with the LBD breaking the mould. Read more