frfashion1-4, Exercise 1: "Chanel freed women"

Model answer (check the details), using the six questions:

1. Who says it? Chanel herself in interviews, later biographers, advertisers for the Chanel brand, and some feminist writers.
2. What exactly is claimed? That Chanel's clothes freed women from restriction. "Freed" is vague: from the corset, from discomfort, from men's tastes, or from social rules?
3. What would count as evidence? Dated garments and patterns, photographs, comparison with other designers' work, sales figures, and what women wrote about their clothes.
4. Compared with what? Poiret, Vionnet, Patou and the dress reformers before 1914 (Chapter 3), and the changes in women's work and sport.
5. Which period? The 1910s and 1920s, in which many designers and social changes coincided.
6. What would change my mind? Evidence that the looser dress came from others first, or that Chanel's clothes were costly, restricting in other ways, or reached few women.

Verdict: Chanel was an important figure in the move to simple, comfortable clothes and made them fashionable, but she was one of several, her couture clothes were expensive and reached a small group, and the wider freeing of women's dress also came from war work, sport and changes in manufacture (check). A careful sentence: "Chanel popularised simple, comfortable dress for women and made it high fashion, alongside other designers and changes in society."

Care: do not accept "invented" or "freed" without asking who else was doing the same.