I chuckled to myself, as I pondered how the phrase "Chic Modernity" would translate into Spanish.
En route to being emptied of meaning altogether, terms like these become buzzwords, Proscio says, and "a policy paper simply isn't serious if it doesn't include the latest exotic technical term or chic business school phrase".
Now the phrase "geek chic" has been introduced into the Oxford English Dictionary – a decade late, but who's counting?
Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, has apologised for using the phrase "migrant chic" to describe a Kanye West fashion show.
They trace the origins of the phrase "the chic and stunning Mrs. William F. Buckley.O Writer had lunch with his mother, going back over all the different fashion phases she had gone through.
And the composer Leonard Bernstein held a celebrity-packed fundraising party at his New York home, complete with uniformed Panthers, which was famously satirised by Tom Wolfe who minted the phrase "radical chic" to describe the rich and famous toying with revolutionary causes.
With fashion in a deep retail rut, and other designers suddenly forced to make dubious claims about "a natural and honest chic" (to use a phrase from the Yves Saint Laurent show notes), Chanel's sense of élan is remarkable.
She certainly didn't invent the look, but by exaggerating it — making the sofas bigger and the covers baggier — and branding it with the phrase "Shabby Chic," Ms. Ashwell intuitively positioned herself in opposition to the buttoned-up decorating styles associated with the financial excesses of the 1980s and the subsequent recession, which was soon to be in full bloom.
Franco Moschino founded his label in 1983, gaining fame for his irreverent, at times anti-fashion fashion statements (a matador jacket emblazoned with the phrase "Bull Chic," for example).
If you're wondering what that means, simply flick through a copy of a fashion magazine and you'll notice phrases like "geek chic" being used to describe the garments of attractive celebrities, who aren't actually geeks at all.
Coining phrases like "radical chic" and "the right stuff," costumed in his startling white suits, Wolfe was very much the iconoclast he always hoped he'd be.
