A new book on the house of Chanel shows its close links with Vogue magazine, integral to its ongoing success …
Do we need another book on Gabrielle Chanel? In the last few years there has been a flurry of new titles. Isabelle Fiemeyer’s biography Chanel: Her Intimate World was written from a privileged perspective based on exclusive interviews with Chanel’s god daughter Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie. She shared memories and access to her Aunt Coco’s private collection of fashion, jewellery and art.
There was also a peep inside Chanel’s holiday hideaway at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in La Pausa: The Ideal Mediterranean Villa of Gabrielle Chanel. Originally designed and decorated by the couturier herself, La Pausa has been reopened as a creative centre after an extensive restoration by architect Peter Marino. La Pausa was Chanel’s refuge where she welcomed friends and leading artistic, cultural and society figures such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and the Duke of Westminster. I recommend Anne de Courcy’s book, Chanel’s Riviera: Life, Love and the Struggle for Survival on the Côte d’Azur (1930-1944), a decadent tale of glamour and survival.
Bang up to date and coinciding with Matthieu Blazy’s first AW26 collection for Chanel – where he showed clothes to live and dream in against a backdrop of upbeat music by Cesaria Evora, Lady Gaga and Olivia Dean – comes Chanel in Vogue, two sleek volumes written by fashion historians Susanna Brown and Rebecca C Tuite. Costing an eye-watering £150stg, these slim volumes come packaged in a high-end large format slipcase.
Natalia Vodianova with Chanel’s head dressmaker Martine Houdet and Chanel colleagues, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for Vogue, 2008.
I was at the London launch of these volumes which show how Chanel’s success is inextricably linked with Vogue – the magazine talent-spotted her as early as the 1910s, highlighting her work as a milliner and her foray into sportswear. From then on, the magazine followed her closely.
Volume One also shows how Chanel actively cultivated successive editors of UK, French and American Vogue – inviting them to her houses and befriending them in an unwritten contract which would, of course, ensure positive coverage. As Tuite also explains in the introduction, “To consider Gabrielle Chanel’s presence in Vogue’s pages is to reflect on the parallel and entwined histories of two defining powers in 20th-century fashion. Vogue and Chanel came of age together, with a remarkable synchronicity to their development.”
The second volume focuses on the work of her successors. Karl Lagerfeld took over the house in 1983 and later Virginie Viard, up to the present day. “Chanel left us with something better than fashion: style. And style, as she preached it, doesn’t grow old,” believed Lagerfeld.
He reimagined the brand, notably creating the Chanel muse by working closely with models such as Ines de la Fressange, Claudia Schiffer and Cara Delevingne. In the process, he inspired stylists and photographers across international editions.
Shalom Harlow, photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, 1996; Conde Nast.
Specialising in photography, Susanna Brown had the enviable job of delving into the Vogue archives, featuring some of the most iconic illustrations and photographs by legends such as Edward Steichen, Horst P Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Ellen von Unwerth, Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel and many more. The result is dreamy. For die-hard fans of Chanel’s pearls, handbags, perfumes or tweed jackets, this is a must-have new book and timeless style guide.
“I try to evolve the Chanel style by thinking of Goethe’s phrase: Make a better future by building on the past,” was Lagerfeld’s mantra. Blazy did that to much aplomb this season.
Need to know: The global launch of the book has rolled out in venues globally, from Librairie 7L in Paris to Reference Point 180 and the National Portrait Gallery in London, as well as V&A Museum. The New York launch takes place at the National Arts Club on March 15.
