Lunchtime Lecture: Gabrielle Chanel- Fashion Subversions

Join curator Connie Karol Burks as she discusses Gabrielle Chanel’s subtly subversive approach to fashioning gender, class, and luxury in her designs. The talk will explore how Chanel’s biography and the social context of her time informed her radical use of materials and key elements of her design aesthetic throughout her sixty-year career.

Connie is Curator of Textiles and Fashion since 1900 at the V&A Museum. She is co-curator of the exhibition Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto and was previously assistant curator of the 2019 exhibition Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams and Fashioned from Nature in 2018. Alongside her research of twentieth and twenty-first century fashion, Connie has a practical background in woven textiles.