The 82nd installment of the Oscars is heading our way on March 7, 2010, and among the big name flicks nominated for Academy Awards, (Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Nine, Sherlock Holmes, and The Young Victoria, to name a few) is Coco Avant Chanel, nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design.

Catherine Leterrier scores the Oscar nomination for Coco Avant Chanel, which starred French actress Audrey Tautou playing the lead in the story of the famed designer who set a new pace for women’s fashion in the Roaring 1920’s, and into today. Leterrier, a French Cesar Award winner in 2000 and 2004, went to great lengths in preparation for the movie, attempting to trace Coco’s inspiration for a number of her iconic looks, including the famous leather quilted hand bag.

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel came from very humble beginnings and made her clothes from remnants and men’s clothes because she had nothing else to work with. In the movie’s press kit, Leterrier explains: “The aim was not to make a movie about the history of fashion. [The] famous striped mariner’s sweater worn by Chanel in the legendary photos of the 1930s appears earlier in the movie, in the scene where Coco is walking along the beach with Boy and notices the sweaters of the fishermen as they pull in their nets. At another point, as Anne [Anne Fontaine-Film Director] wanted me to imagine how the world-famous Chanel bag originated, I drew a quilted sewing pouch in the shape of the bag, and had it made out of an old, black, flecked cotton canvas that peasants’ clothing used to be made of, as if the young Coco had made it out of a remnant given to her by her aunts.”

“In fashion, every designer has their own line, color and material codes,” she goes on to say. “Chanel’s is instantly recognizable. What Karl Lagerfeld did in adapting the Chanel style to the future, I did backwards towards the past. I went back in time, designing the first models that Chanel might have created and which could have fashioned her style. The Chanel style is distinctive in its cut, the supple hang of its fabric and the perfect simplicity of its finish. The costumes designed for the film had to be up to the exacting standards of haute couture.”

Check out Chanel fragrances and cross your fingers on Oscar night for Catherine Leterrier and Coco Avant Chanel.