The New York subway belongs to all. Everyone uses it: there are students and gamechangers; statesmen and teenagers. It is a place full of enigmatic yet wonderful encounters, a clash of pop archetypes, where everyone has somewhere to go and each is unique in what they wear. Like in the movies, they are the heroes of their own stories.” Matthieu Blazy
The New York City subway is the great leveller; all human life is here. Constantly in flux, always becoming but never being, the subway is a microcosm of New York and a metaphor for fashion itself. There is always drama around every corner and a fascination for who you might meet. Here it is Chanel’s ‘sub(way)-culture’ where the ordinary becomes the extraordinary, with the aid of the Maisons d’art. It also marks the debut Métiers d’art collection for Matthieu Blazy as Artistic Director of Fashion Activities.
Cinematic in its scope, the collection features a joyful cavalcade of personalities. There are socialites and superheroes, teens and olds, working girls and showgirls, the ladies who lunch and mothers on the go, each seen through a filmic lens – including Coco Chanel herself. In short, all the glitter and grit of the Big Apple, both in reality and in the imagination.
Shifting through space and time, from the 1920s to the 2020s, from Art Deco extravagances to a new silken lounge reality, a conflation of periods and personas tells a non-linear tale with the crafts of the Métiers d’art at its heart. Playful and chic, pragmatic and eccentric, a love story between Paris and New York unfolds, one of the exceptional savoir-faire of the Maisons d’art of le19M united with the pow! of pop impact. Each piece is a love letter to the intensity and emotion of exceptional craftsmanship.
Initially inspired by Gabrielle Chanel’s sojourns in New York City in 1931, on her way to and from Hollywood, Matthieu Blazy runs with this cinematic association for the collection. Originally, movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s uptown fashion aims were the impetus for this filmic association with Chanel. Yet it was in downtown NYC rather than in Hollywood that Gabrielle Chanel regained her confidence in Chanel’s democratic, global appeal. Just before her journey back to Paris, she discovered those downtown who had adopted the Chanel style in their own way. She found this pop celebration of her clothing to be the sincerest form of flattery. Gabrielle Chanel returned to Europe, renewed – one of the many reasons that Chanel ❤ New York.
