Simone de Beauvoir may have given us feminism, but Coco Chanel gave us the L.B.D. (Little Black Dress), which is, let's face it, a much more viable survival tool.
Start talking "The Second Sex" jargon at a party and the entire male populace will probably unite in a panicked stampede toward the door. But the power of a snug little L.B.D. needs no words and hushes all arguments. In the end, it was Chanel who understood what a woman really needs while Beauvoir (with all due respect) remained steeped in her political agenda.
From this viewpoint, the surprise isn't that there's a Chanel biopic out there (with the very straightforward title of "Coco Chanel"), but that there aren't 25 more of them. Think of what women owe her. Until Chanel came along, clothing design was a strictly male-dictated industry, and women who worked didn't have much choice when it came to wardrobe — the pendulum was likely to swing between cleavage-heaving vamp or much-tried spinsterish secretary. Really, what was a girl to do?