Yesterday in Paris Chanel staged its annual Métiers d’art catwalk show. It was a celebration of the work of its ten artisan workshops, from the embroidery house of Lesage to the milliner Maison Michel, by way of the pleater — yes, pleater — Lognon.
If you find the idea of a Chanel tweed jacket unimaginably other-worldly — not to mention costly — then imagine one hand-decorated with feathers by Lemarié, one of the last so-called plumassiers in the world. How the other half dresses.
These workshops — originally independent businesses, some of which date back to the 19th century — have been acquired by Chanel in recent decades as part of the brand’s avowed mission to protect the specialised production that first established Paris as the world’s fashion capital.
In the warp-speed world of 21st-century trends, without the embrace of a house that has made transitioning from the old way of doing things to the new look easy, they would all now be at risk of closure.
The show marked the inauguration of a new building in which the artisans are housed together for the first time, a vast, modernist temple to traditional techniques. What of the clothes? Under Karl Lagerfeld — who headed up Chanel until his death in 2019 — Métiers d’art was unapologetically fantastical. One show was held in a ruined Scottish castle, complete with redolent ballgowns.
Advertisement
Under Virginie Viard, the brand’s current creative director, the fairytale has been given a more real-world inflection, combining the off-the-peg wearability upon which Coco Chanel originally built her house with the hand-crafted attention to detail that is usually found only in the made-to-measure realm of couture.
Relaxed knitwear was rendered suitably 0.1 per cent by way of graffiti-style beading.
Whilst some looks were a definite case of more is more — see for example a jewel-encrusted gold and scarlet waistcoat that looked like it belonged in the Tower of London — there was an appealing restraint to others.
A cobweb of embroidery designed to evoke the facade of the new building appeared only on the patch pockets of an otherwise unadorned black column coat, for example. Very stealth wealth, and all the better for it.
