Next, we can look at early 20th century brands like Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet. Chanel and Vionnet were vocal feminists – in addition to which Vionnet was an ardent supporter of workers’ rights – at the time of the first wave of feminism, the suffrage movement, and when socialist influences were agitating the debate about economic justice. On the one hand, they gave women a new sartorial vocabulary, physically and metaphorically liberating women from the corset of social pressures. In addition to this, Vionnet (much bigger than Chanel at the time) built a cutting-edge manufacturing facility designed to promote the comfort, health and well-being of her employees, in addition to providing paid leave, child care and health care on site, decades before these were common practice among employers. But her reasoning was not just philanthropic. Rather, she felt that you simply cannot create exceptional product in less than exceptional conditions.