Chic is a French word, established in English since at least the 1870s, that has come to mean smart or stylish. Early references in English dictionaries classified it as slang and the New Zealand-born lexicographer Eric Partridge noted, with reference to its colloquial meaning, that it was "not so used in Fr[ench]" ^[1]. There is a similar word in German, schick, meaning tact or skill; indeed chic may be linked to the word chicane. Eric Honeywood Partridge (February 6, 1894-June 1, 1979) was a noted lexicographer of the English language, and particularly of its slang. ...

Riviera chic - Monte Carlo

Image File history File linksMetadata Monte_Carlo_Casino_2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Monte_Carlo_Casino_2. ... The Quai des États-Unis in Nice on the French Riviera at night. ... Monte Carlo is a very wealthy section of the city-state of Monaco known for its casino, gambling, beaches, glamour, and sightings of famous people. ...

Examples of usage

Over the years "chic" has been applied to, among other things, social events, situations, individuals and modes or styles of dress. It was one of a number of "slang words" that Fowler linked to particular professions - specifically, to "society journalism" - with the advice that, if used in such a context, "familiarity will disguise and sometimes it will bring out its slanginess" ^[2]. Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 - 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on usage, notable for both Fowlers Modern English Usage (first published 1926) and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary. ...

• In 1887 The Lady noted that "the ladies of New York ... think no form of entertainment so chic as a luncheon party" ^[3].

Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, 1954

• Forty years later, in E F Benson's novel Lucia in London (1927), Lucia was aware that the arrival of a glittering array of guests before their hostess for an impromptu post-opera gathering was "the most chic informality that it was possible to conceive".

• In the 1950s Edith Head designed a classic dress, worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film Sabrina (1954), of which she remarked, "If it had been worn by somebody with no chic it would never have become a style" ^[4].

• By the turn of the 21st century the travel company Thomas Cook was advising those wishing to sample the nightlife of the sophisticated Mediterranan resort of Monte Carlo that "casual is fine (except at the Casino) but make it expensive, and very chic, casual if you want to blend in" ^[5].

According to the American magazine Harper's Bazaar (referring to the "dramatic simplicity" of the day-wear of couturier Christóbal Balenciaga, 1895-1972), "elimination is the secret of chic" ^[6]. Image File history File links AudreyHepburnInSabrina. ... Image File history File links AudreyHepburnInSabrina. ... Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was an Academy Award-winning actress, fashion model, and humanitarian. ... Sabrina has various meanings. ... Edward Frederic Benson (July 24, 1867 – February 29, 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. ... Cover of the DVD of the TV series Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson, and is also the name of a television series based on those novels. ... Edith Head on the cover of the book The Life and Times of Edith Head by David Chierichetti Edith Head (October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American costume designer who had a long career in Hollywood that garnered her more Academy Awards than any other woman in history. ... Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was an Academy Award-winning actress, fashion model, and humanitarian. ... Sabrina is a 1954 film directed by Billy Wilder, adapted for the screen by Wilder, Samuel Taylor, and Ernest Lehman from Taylors play Sabrina Fair (in the UK, the movie has the title Sabrina Fair). ... Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) of Melbourne, Derbyshire, founded the travel agency that bears his name. ... Monte Carlo is a very wealthy section of the city-state of Monaco known for its casino, gambling, beaches, glamour, and sightings of famous people. ...

Pronunciation

Although the French pronunciation (shēk or "sheek") is now virtually standard and was that given by Fowler ^[7], chic was often rendered in the anglicised - and distinctly unchic - form of "chick". An example was in Simon Raven's Edward and Mrs Simpson (Thames, 1978), a television drama based on the events leading to the Abdication crisis of 1936, when the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee (played by Patrick Troughton), used the word slightly contemptuously during a meeting with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (David Waller). Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 - 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on usage, notable for both Fowlers Modern English Usage (first published 1926) and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary. ... Simon Arthur Noël Raven, (December 28, 1927 – May 12, 2001), was a novelist, journalist and dramatist. ... Edward And Mrs. ... Like King Henry VIII of England, whose wish to marry Anne Boleyn in the 1530s rocked his kingdom, King Edward VIII created a crisis for the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth in the 1930s when he wished to marry Wallis Simpson: many have argued that the problem for Edward... Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, FRS, PC (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1945 to 1951. ... Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC (3 August 1867–14 December 1947) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions. ...

"The French use 'sheik' for everything" - Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Florin edition 1933)

In a fictional vignette for Punch (c.1932) Mrs F A Kilpatrick attributed to a young woman who seventy years later would have been called a "chavette" the following assertion: "It 'asn't go no buttons neither ... That's the latest ideer. If you want to be chick you just 'ang on to it, it seems" ^[8]. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (672x984, 113 KB) Cover of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, 1933 edition This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned either by the artist who created the cover or the publisher of... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (672x984, 113 KB) Cover of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, 1933 edition This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned either by the artist who created the cover or the publisher of... Anita Loos (April 26, 1889 – August 18, 1981) was an acclaimed American screenwriter, playwright and author. ... Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. ... Look up chav and charva in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

By contrast, in Anita Loos' novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), the diarist Lorelei Lee recorded that "the French use the word 'sheik' for everything, while we only seem to use if for gentlemen when they seem to resemble Rudolf Valentino" (a pun derived from the latter's being the star of the 1921 silent film, The Sheik). Anita Loos (April 26, 1889 – August 18, 1981) was an acclaimed American screenwriter, playwright and author. ... Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a novel written by Anita Loos that was published in 1925, a Broadway play produced in 1926, a Broadway musical produced in 1949, which Loos also wrote the book for, and two motion pictures. ... Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 - August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. ... The Sheik was a 1921 silent movie produced by Paramount, directed by George Melford and starring Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres and Adolphe Menjou. ...

Variants

The Oxford Dictionary gives the comparative and superlative forms as chicer and chicest. These are wholly English words: the French equivalents would be plus chic and le/la plus chic. Super-chic is sometimes used: "super-chic Incline bucket in mouth-blown, moulded glass" ^[9].

An adverb chicly has also appeared: "Pamela Gross ... turned up chicly dressed down" ^[10].

The use of the French très chic (very chic) by an English speaker - "Luckily it's très chic to be neurotic in New York" ^[11] - is usually rather pretentious, but sometimes merely facetious: Micky Dolenz of the Monkees described ironically the Indian-style suit he wore at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 as "très chic" ^[12]. Über-chic is roughly the mock-German equivalent: "Like his clubs, it's super-modern, über-chic, yet still comfortable" ^[13]. George Michael Dolenz, Jr. ... The Monkees in 1968 (left to right): Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones The Monkees were a four-person band who appeared in an American television series of the same name, which ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968. ... Poster promoting the festival The Monterey International Pop Music Festival took place from June 16 to June 18, 1967. ...

The opposite of "chic" is unchic: "the then uncrowded, unchic little port of St Tropez" ^[14]. Saint-Tropez promenade Saint-Tropez is a commune of the Var département in southern France, located on the French Riviera. ...

The "-chic" form

Look up chic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Towards the end of the 20th century and in the early years of the 21st, lexicographers, such as Susie Dent in her annual Language Reports (2003-5) for the Oxford University Press, noted how "-chic", as a suffix, came to be applied to various trends in fashion. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... Susie Dent is a British lexicographer born in Woking in the late 1960s. ...

Radical chic

This form can probably be traced to the term, radical chic, coined in 1970 by the American journalist Tom Wolfe (b.1930) to describe a concert given for the Black Panthers by the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. By extension this was applied more generally to the adoption of radical causes by well-to-do society figures and celebrities. It was around this time, for example, that actress Jane Fonda ("Hanoi Jane" as she came to be dubbed) developed contacts with the Black Panthers and embarked (in 1972) on a controversial visit to North Vietnam. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a revolutionary Black nationalist organization in the United States that formed in the late 1960s and grew to national prominence before falling apart due to factional rivalries stirred up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ... Leonard Bernstein in 1971 Leonard Bernstein (pronounced Bern-styne)[1] (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, pianist and conductor. ... Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. ... Hanoi (Vietnamese: Hà Ná»™i)  , estimated population 3,058,000(2004), is the capital of Vietnam. ... The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic (Vietnamese: Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cá»™ng Hòa), also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, September 2nd1945 and was recognized by the Peoples Republic of China and the...

Such apparent incongruity had been observed also in France before and during the "May Revolution" of 1968. A contemporaneous account of early disturbances at the University of Nanterre noted that "it is the girls that give the show away - culottes, glossy leather, mini-skirts, boots - driving up in Mini-Coopers ..." ^[15]. Similarly, in Paris, "the theatre of the barricades ... attracted its share of chic walk-ons in Saint Laurent" ^[16]. A May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up, with the stereotypical silhouette of the General de Gaulle. ... Culottes,are a split skirt or divided skirt. ... The miniskirt is a skirt whose hemline is a ways above the knees (generally from ten to twenty centimetres above knee-level). ... Minis The Mini is the name of a small car produced from 1959 to 2000, and the name of its replacement (known as New MINI) launched in 2001. ... Yves Saint-Laurent (born August 1, 1936 in Oran, Algeria) is a French fashion designer. ...

Chic to chic

Some imitative terms, such as heroin chic (the waif-like, drug addicted look of the mid 1990s associated with the model Kate Moss) and boho-chic (a "Bohemian" style popularised by actress Sienna Miller in the mid "noughties") had a significant and recognisable impact, but others were essentially the passing coinages of journalists or retailers. Examples are listed alphabetically: Heroin Chic was a fashion trend in the mid 1990s that characterized the looks of a terminal stage drug addict. ... Waif is used to described a very thin (almost unhealthy thin) looking person, usually a woman. ... Katherine Moss, (born January 16, 1974, Croydon, Greater London), known as Kate Moss, is an English supermodel who is known for her waifish figure, high profile relationships and iconic advertising campaigns. ... Short floaty skirt, 2005 Boho-chic was a style of female fashion (c. ... In modern usage, the term Bohemian (sometimes shortened to boho) is applied to people who live unconventional, usually artistic, lives. ... Sienna Rose Miller (born December 28, 1981) is an American-born actress and model. ...

Chic: A-L

Chelsea chic: Lalique Garden, designed by Shahriar Mazandi, May 2005

Image File history File linksMetadata Lalique_Garden_2005. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Lalique_Garden_2005. ... René Jules Lalique was born in Ay, Marne, France on April 6, 1860, and died May 5, 1945. ...

Chic: M-Z

Generic terms

Recurring generic terms included designer chic (associated with the styles of particular coutouriers - the 1980s became known as the "designer decade") and retro-chic (adopting elements of fashion from the past: e.g. "Victorian chic", "sixties chic", "Georgian chic" ^[17], "1920s Riviera chic" ^[18]). Designer is a broad term for a person who designs any of a variety of things. ...

Chic gardens

In 2002 the Royal Horticultural Society introduced an award category of "chic garden" at its annual Chelsea Flower Show (first held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital in 1913). The first winner of this award was "Understanding", designed by Tamsin Partridge, a landscape gardener from Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, which included a zig-zag path made of tyre treads and planting that featured purple cannas, phormiums and bronze grasses. The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 as the London Horticultural Society, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861 by Prince Albert. ... The Chelsea Flower Show is a garden show held each year for four days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London, England. ... Figure Court of Royal Hospital Chelsea The Royal Hospital Chelsea is a retirement home and nursing home for British soldiers who are unfit for further duty due to injury or old age, located in the Chelsea region of central London. ... Look up zigzag in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Notes