Chanel is presenting its latest Métiers d’Art collection – the first designed by Karl Lagerfeld’s successor, Virginie Viard – in London on 4 June at Old Billingsgate. Originally presented to members of the press in December, Viard called upon Sofia Coppola to transform the Grand Palais into a magnified version of Gabrielle Chanel’s 31 rue Cambon apartment – in other words, the heart of the brand.
It was “a homecoming of almost religious proportions,” wrote British Vogue fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen at the time. As well as the gilded lion heads, bouquets of wheat and personal items of Mademoiselle Chanel peppered throughout the show space, the collection honoured house codes, such as ribbons, camellias, the double C and the No. 5 fragrance bottle. “There is a form of simplicity… to Chanel’s ABC,” Viard told fashion features director, Sarah Harris. “So we had to think of a new way of doing things… the codes invented by Gabrielle Chanel and rendered sublime by Karl Lagerfeld… I like mixing them up.”