London - Al Sharqiya September 16: Today, Saturday, the famous Victoria and Albert Museum in London will witness the opening of an exhibition that explores 60 years of Gabrielle Chanel’s career in the field of fashion. It highlights her role in changing the concept of women’s fashion and also presents new discoveries about her past during the World War II era.

Chanel is considered one of the most famous international fashion brands, and its iconic symbols, such as the tweed suit, the quilted bag, and the camellia flower... are still strongly present on the international fashion scene despite the death of its founder, Gabrielle Chanel, in 1971 at the age of 87 years.

Oriol Collin, head of the fashion department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, said about her in a statement to Agence France-Presse: “Miss Chanel is considered one of the pillars of Western fashion. She was an amazing woman and a name that is still strongly present in our modern culture.”

This exhibition is titled Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto "Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion statement." It sheds light on the period extending between Miss Chanel's beginnings in 1910 in Paris and the presentation of her last collection in 1971. This exhibition includes about 200 of her designs through which she embodied a new concept of femininity, and launched fashions that were both comfortable, elegant and simple.

The first piece in the exhibition is a sailor-style blouse dating back to 1916. It is one of the oldest clothes created by Miss Chanel. It was made with fine silk jersey, a fabric that was used during that period to make underwear and socks. As for its collar, it was inspired by fishermen’s clothing.

Ten years after the implementation of this blouse, Gabrielle Chanel was able to establish her position at the forefront of the French fashion scene and launched the “little black dress” in the year 1926. It is still one of the essential pieces in the modern woman’s wardrobe to this day. Vogue magazine said about it when it was launched about a century ago, “It is the garment that women of the entire world will wear.”

In 1921, Miss Chanel launched her most famous perfume, Chanel N5, which became the object of admiration for the star Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II, and to this day it remains one of the best-selling perfumes in the world.

Gabrielle Chanel was born into a poor family and grew up in a monastery, but she was later able to build distinguished relationships with the English aristocracy, as some pictures show her with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and at the Ascot races during the 1920s and 1930s.

During World War II, Gabrielle closed her shop on the Parisian Rue Cambon and moved to live in the Ritz Hotel, part of which was seized by the Nazi regime. At the age of 57, she fell in love with the German embassy attaché, Hans Gunter von Dincklage. The exhibition devotes a small hall to this sensitive period in her life when the Nazi authorities registered her in July 1941 as a “reliable source of information,” although it is not certain that she was aware of this. Her code name was “Westminster” and her number was F7124.

In December 1943, Gabrielle Chanel was part of a German secret operation, as the Nazis wanted to use her connections in England to contact Churchill. If her cooperation with Nazi Germany was known, the Victoria and Albert Museum reveals in this exhibition new documents showing that in January 1943 Miss Chanel joined the French Resistance as an occasional agent, and in a document dated in Paris in 1948 her name appeared in a list of the names of occasional agents as well. The Victoria and Albert Gallery displays a French combat membership certificate belonging to Mademoiselle Chanel, dating between January 1943 and April 1944. This increases the mystery surrounding the intelligence role played by Gabrielle Chanel during this period.

After World War II, Gabrielle went to Switzerland, but returned to France to achieve additional successes in the world of fashion. In 1954, at the age of 71, she launched the famous tweed suit, and the Victoria and Albert Museum displays 54 of these designs in a hall that extends over two floors, including a beige T-shirt worn by the designer in 1958.

The exhibition also includes a collection of sparkling evening gowns and ends with a hall that evokes the staircase in the Chanel fashion house on Rue Cambon, where it is said that she used to stand at the top, hiding behind mirrors, to monitor the clients who came to her fashion house to purchase her latest designs.