Virginie Viard’s First Chanel Métiers d’Art Collection Is Coming To London

Chanel is presenting its latest Métiers d’Art collection – the first designed by Karl Lagerfeld’s successor, Virginie Viard – in London on 4th 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.”

Viard was well placed to reimagine these tropes for the modern Chanel woman. Under Lagerfeld, she oversaw the previous 17 Métiers d’Art collections with Maison Lesage, one of the 11 ateliers Chanel owns, whose work is celebrated during these seasons.

While the Brit fashion crowd will be able to see the exquisite craftsmanship of the embroiderers, feathermakers, paruriers, pleaters, shoemakers, milliners and glove makers again this summer, the Métiers d’Art collection will not travel to Beijing, where it had been slated to go before London.

“Considering the current situation and following the guidance of Chinese authorities, Chanel has decided to postpone its project of a replica of the Paris – 31 Rue Cambon 2019/20 Métiers d’art collection in May in Beijing to a later and more appropriate moment,” the house said in a statement.

While Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of global fashion, shared positive sales results at the Métiers d’Art presentation in December – “We just launched Virginie’s cruise collection in the boutique and it’s probably one of the best successes ever at Chanel,” he told Madsen – there is much uncertainty surrounding the impact the coronavirus epidemic will have on brands.