4 December 2024 |
It was a celebration of the work of les petite mains across cultures.
It all started with a coromandel screen. Gabrielle Chanel was famously known for her love for Chinese art. But despite being fascinated by the lacquer technique and the enigmatic scenes depicted on the screens, Mademoiselle Chanel never visited China herself. Karl Lagerfeld, on the other hand, had brought the 2010 Métier D’Art show to Shanghai. Nearly 15 years later, the brand has returned to the country in search of the vision on the coromandel screen. The result? A shared love of craftsmanship was realized in Hangzhou, China’s silk center.
The city’s famous West Lake, known to inspire poets and scholars alike since the ninth century, served as the setting for the show. It also happened to echo the mise-en-scène on Chanel’s screens. “I can easily see how those [pieces] ignited Gabrielle Chanel’s imagination, because it still happens today to any viewer, when you stand in front of them,” said Wim Wenders who directed the accompanying film featuring Tilda Swinton. “Those Coromandel screens are, in many ways, very early cinema screens,” said Swinton.
Liu Wen opened the show with a sleek long coat in black tweeds, followed by a series of head-to-toe black total looks rendered in silk and leather before segueing into rich hues like jade green and gold. As a call back to the motifs seen on the Coromandel screens, the embroideries reflected a meticulous attention to detail. Clouds looked as if they were plucked straight off the scene set in the artwork while sequined flowers appeared to bloom before your eyes. Even the fabrics lent a lavish appeal with the sheer luminosity of the velvet nodding to the iridescence seen in mother-of-pearl. The camelia, Chanel’s signature blossom, found its way into every detail in this collection be it on quilted puffers, jacquard skirts, and even as a gilded golden detail on tweeds. After all, it’s not a Chanel Métier D’art collection without showstopping skills and techniques from the artisans. The silhouettes also highlight the Paris-to-Hangzhou connection from the pagoda sleeves to the mandarin collars. Case in point: a puffer with exaggerated quilting nodded to similar Chinese jackets popular in the cold northern region of the country.
Was this a recreation of Karl Lagerfeld’s Shanghai archives or simply a reproduction of Gabrielle Chanel’s Chinese screens? The answer is neither. Christelle Kocher, the creative director of Maison Lemarié, admitted they referred to Karl Lagerfeld’s work as much as they revisit Gabrielle Chanel’s but it is really “a collective work” of the artisans that realized this. The 12 Maisons D’art brought the collection to life with their expertises fueled by their imaginations. The fact that they were able to execute this collection without a creative director once again proved that the spirit of Chanel is driven by the commitment to creativity and the devotion to savoir-faire.
