Desire may not be one of the five senses, but guaranteed it will be stimulated along with the others as you wander around the halls of Chanel´s new Mademoiselle Privé exhibition at London's Saatchi Gallery. Opening to the public tomorrow, the exhibition explores the creativity of both Chanel's eponymous founder, Gabrielle, known as Coco, and its current creative director, Karl Lagerfeld, who assumed the helm only 12 years after Coco's death.
Named for the sign that Coco placed on the door of her atelier in order that she could work undisturbed, Mademoiselle Privé is a 3-D feast for the senses. A complementary app allows visitors to the exhibition to experience another layer of visual delights - with one plainly dressed room displaying Coco´s Rue Cambon apartment when viewed through the app, while others offer up quotes and facts on the lady herself - each room referencing an element crucial to the creativity of the house's two designers.
"So, six days after the spring/summer show - which was very powerful and about the creativity of the brand - here we are talking again about creativity," Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel's CEO, joked this morning as the press preview was unveiled. "We felt we wanted, and needed, to say something about what goes on behind the scenes; about creativity. When you see Chanel, you see Mademoiselle, you see her apartment, you see the magnificent shows, but you don't see much about what's happening behind the scenes. We felt it was a good time for the brand to give away some secrets."
The story begins before you even step inside as the entrance - usually a long, straight walk from the Kings Road gate to the door - is reimagined as a meandering English country garden, created by British landscape designers Harry and David Rich. Once inside, we wander through the places that meant the most to Coco - from her virtual Rue Cambon apartment (although the famous mirrored stairs are there in a physical capacity), to Venice, Scotland, her first hat shop in Deauville, and beyond.
Inside the next space a giant spinning birdcage, which could easily house a twittering Vanessa Paradis in her Coco fragrance ad days, instead holds an enlarged version of a star-covered diamond necklace created by Coco in 1932, more of which later. The brand's key codes - from black and white, to red, to the camellia - are explored in the totem room, with more detailed explanations available on the accompanying app for real aficionados.
The fabric-lined sensory room allows visitors to touch and wander through real Chanel couture fabrics, from delicate silks to its famous bouclé tweeds, while artisans pin and sew on shadow-paper screens. Another mysterious agent of creation, the olfactory artisans who blend the house's famous scents, are introduced in a Willy Wonka-style scent-filled room packed with bubbling vats - the lids of which lift without warning to reveal the fragrance, and sometimes surprising colour, inside.
Upstairs, the clothes themselves are brought to life, firstly in the haute couture space - where the most delicate of dresses are placed on mannequins suspended on bright poles of light - allowing visitors to see the embroidery and workmanship that goes into every piece. Next door, we revisit Chanel's work with what she said represented "the greatest value in the smallest volume": diamonds.
Only a few pieces remain from the original Bijoux de Diamants High Jewellery collection, from which the caged necklace that we saw downstairs comes, but the entire offering has been recreated for Mademoiselle Privé, displayed on couture-clothed mannequins. Each mannequin, dressed as one of the high-profiel ´gamblers´ at Chanel´s most recent couture show, wears a piece from the collection - created by Coco at a time when the established jewellery houses felt more than a little perturbed by the thought of a fashion house dabbling in diamonds. First set to be displayed in London in 1932, but stopped due to stringent British customs regulations, it is finally unveiled after 83 years - alongside Lagerfeld-lensed photographs offering on stars including Keira Knightley, Kristen Stewart, Lily-Rose Depp, Vanessa Paradis, Rita Ora and Lara Stone.
The quietest and most contemplative final room holds a neat French garden - a sensory phenomenon with its fresh-scented real box hedges and meandering double C pathways. On the floor above, workshops hosted by Chanel artisans including Lesage teach skills from embroidery to camellia-making and perfume blending - allowing visitors to dip a toe into the creativity they've witnessed, albeit without much hope of ever scaling these dizzy heights.
With plans to launch e-commerce late next year, and several new apps to aid customers and fans' interactions with the brand, it's clear that Chanel is very much in the pro-tech camp compared to many of its luxury competitors. Pavlovsky, as charming and aimiable as you could ever hope a CEO to be - albeit with a politician's knack for always saying only as much as he wants to - is certainly part of this move to modernity, although the choice, he insists, is a no-brainer.
"The way we look at the future, isn't by asking 'How can we make this digital?' it's there from the ground up," he explained. "We want to use all our means to be connected to our customers; digital is the area between the boutique and the customers, so it's the most powerful way for us to engage with them. Some people go shopping, they like to be surprised, to wander, they don't know where they are going, but others want to be connected and want to prepare. They know that when they go to the boutique they need to see this, this, this and this - and our job is to make that happen in the easiest way possible."
It feels as though London has been chosen as the site of many more fashion exhibitions than we're used to this year - with Hermés, McQueen, Vuitton and now Chanel selecting the capital for global showcases. Don't allow your possible cultural fatigue to dissuade you from visit the Saatchi for this one though - for fans of Chanel, it really is a must-see.
