Gabrielle Chanel, 31 rue Cambon, 1937, Paris. Photo: Roger Schall/Condé Nast/Shutterstock

The UK has long awaited such an ambitious exhibition focusing on the style and work of one of the great icons of contemporary fashion. After the success of the first weeks since its premiere and a triumphant opening, the V&A resumes its usual activity so that culture lovers can contemplate with greater peace of mind the life path and savoir-faire of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel.

Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto is the first exhibition dedicated to the work of the celebrated French couturier and traces the evolution of her iconic design style and the creation of the House of CHANEL, from the opening of her first hat store in Paris in 1910 to the presentation from his last collection in 1971.

The exhibition stands out for its grandeur in every aspect, with rarely seen pieces that have been recovered from the Palais Galliera and the heritage collections that form part of the Chanel Heritage. It presents in the same space almost 200 looks that are exhibited together for the first time, as well as accessories, perfumes and jewelry, which explore Gabrielle Chanel’s talent in fashion design. She was a visionary who paved the way to a new elegance and continues to influence the way women dress today. Among the treasures exhibited, one of the oldest Chanel garments preserved, dating from 1916, stands out; original costumes designed for the production of Ballets Russes from Le Train Bleu in 1924; outfits created for Hollywood stars Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich; an early example of Chanel’s revolutionary evening pants and ensembles from Chanel’s final collection in 1971.

An unprecedented formula: comfortable elegance

Chanel designed above all for herself. By creating clothing suitable for an independent and active lifestyle, she anticipated the needs and desires of women. “Gabrielle Chanel dedicated her life to creating, perfecting and promoting a new type of elegance based on freedom of movement, a natural and casual pose, a subtle elegance that rejects all extravagance, a timeless style for a new type of woman,” said Miren Arzalluz , director of the Palais Galliera at the opening of the exhibition in London. This is precisely the Coco Chanel Manifesto, a legacy that remains alive today: “Her success was based not only on the functionality, comfort and chic elegance of her designs, but also on her ability to understand and interpret the needs and desires of the women of her time,” added Arzalluz.

Through ten thematic sections, the exhibition explores Chanel’s innovative approach to fabric, silhouette and construction, and examines how she established a new framework for fashion in the 20th century. Showcasing an impressive array of some of Chanel’s most notable designs during her sixty years in fashion, the exhibition examines her professional career, the emergence and development of her style and her contribution to fashion history. The exhibition also places special emphasis on Chanel’s British inspirations, such as her adoption of tweed, collaborations with British textile companies and a textile factory in Huddersfield.

Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto at the Victoria and Albert Museum

We review some key sections present in the exhibition:

Towards a New Elegance offers an introduction to the beginning of Gabrielle Chanel’s career as a couturier, opening her first boutique on the rue Cambon in Paris in 1910, and later, in the coastal resorts of Deauville and Biarritz. This introductory section describes how the success of this business allowed it to expand into tailoring and showcases one of the oldest surviving Chanel garments, characterized by minimalism and precision. A simplified way of dressing that contrasted with the excessively decorative fashions of the time and that would lay the foundations for its design principles.

The Emergence of a Style focuses on how Chanel developed a distinctive and immediately recognizable style in the 1920s and 1930s. With clean lines, fluid materials and a simple colour palette, her understated designs were radical in their practicality and displayed an elegance refined. This block also examines the role of textiles and manufacturing, the use of embroidery in their designs and highlights the famous black Chanel dress.

The Invisible Accessory presents the creation and impact of the debut of Gabrielle Chanel’s No. 5 perfume, which became the best-selling fragrance in the world. Designed as an extension of her clothing and reflecting her vision of modernity, Chanel made the N°5 the signature of her fashion house. This section also explores the launch of the Chanel makeup line in 1924 and skin care products in 1927.

Luxury and Line focuses on how Chanel eveningwear demonstrated a refined blend of inventiveness and classicism that subtly accentuated the female form. The designer harmonized proportions and materials with the aim of creating garments that expressed elegance, freedom and simplicity. The resulting designs conveyed the tension between the garment and the body, described in French as the ‘ allure ‘. This block will also examine ‘ Bijoux de Diamants ‘, his first and only fine jewelry collection from 1932 commissioned by International Diamond Corporation of London.

Closing the House describes the impact of the outbreak of war in 1939 on her personal and professional life. The exhibition continues with Chanel’s Official Return to Fashion on 5th February, 1954, with the reopening of her haute couture house at the age of seventy-one. Chanel’s comeback collection featured the distinctive features she had introduced so successfully during the 1920s and 1930s, representing her updated vision of the modern woman’s wardrobe.

The Suit focuses on Gabrielle Chanel’s defining garment of post-war fashion, with over fifty outfits in a variety of colours displayed on two levels. A statement of her vision of modern femininity, the Chanel suit combined comfort and elegance with simplicity and style. Described by Vogue in 1964 as “the most beautiful uniform in the world”, the Chanel suit, which has since become a timeless classic, remains a fundamental reference in fashion today.

Chanel Codes shows how accessories were fundamental to Chanel’s conception of a harmonious silhouette. The accessories reflected her pragmatic vision of fashion and provided recognizable codes that underlined the unity of her style. Since the 1950s, the Chanel 2.55 bag and two-tone slingback shoes have become two of the most enduring accessories in the fashion world.

Into the Evening presents festive fashion as an important part of Chanel’s haute couture collections in the last stage of her career. From the late 1950s she adapted her suits to include a range that could be worn at night. These cocktail dresses followed the same shape as her day suits, made in a variety of richly decorative fabrics such as gold and silver lamés , textured fabrics, and intricately printed silks. This section takes inspiration from the gold colour palette and black Coromandel lacquer lampshades of Chanel’s own apartment.

Costume Jewellery explores the essential part of Gabrielle Chanel’s distinctive style. Rejecting the conventions of fine jewelry, Chanel gave costume jewelry a new status. From the early 1920s, Chanel boutiques offered a dazzling range of costume jewelry to match its elegant fashion pieces. The designer’s costume jewelry took inspiration from various places and historical periods.

A Timeless Allure represents the end of the exhibition and celebrates the evening dress as an exercise in Chanel style, with looks displayed in a recreation of the iconic mirrored staircase based on the designer’s atelier. Chanel proposed a relaxed version of the formal dress that was discreet and refined, revisiting the foundations that had guided her aesthetic and marked her career. This block shows that, until her last Spring -Summer 1971 collection , Gabrielle Chanel constantly reinterpreted, updated and perfected her rules and principles, continually refining her legendary style.

The Gabrielle Chanel exhibition. Fashion Manifesto will be open to the public until the 25^th February.

Gabrielle Chanel, Trouser suit 1937-38 © CHANEL / Photo: Nicholas Alan Cope / Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum, London / Given by Mrs Diana Vreelan

Pablo Picasso. Las bañistas, 1918. Óleo sobre lienzo. 27 x 22 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris, donación en 1979. ©RMN Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) © Sylvie Chan-Liat © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022.

Imagine going back 100 years ago. At a time and in a place where creativity mixes with the avant-garde. The provocation with nonconformity. painting and fashion. Imagine meeting Pablo Picasso and Gabrielle Chanel, conversing, exchanging synergies, experimenting with forms and materials, and creating art through their respective disciplines under the same aesthetic and conceptual vision. Does it not seem motivating for you?

Mutual influence

Presentations are unnecessary, Picasso and Chanel were two geniuses who met at the right time and in the right place in full professional ascension and at the peak of their talent. At the time, the two creators were in their thirties and enjoyed success and social prestige: Picasso with his paintings and Chanel with her feminine revolution towards comfortable and avant-garde elegance. Picasso and Chanel admired each other, they frequented the same artistic venues: from trendy clubs to ballet.

In the 1920s, Picasso’s cubist spirit shook all the arts and his style did not go unnoticed in Chanel’s designs: geometries, precise cuts, suits with straight lines and studied angles that were present in the dresses that triumphed among the most fashionable women. liberated and modern of the time. In general, simplicity was sought as opposed to the baroque style of the previous era. For this reason, the two geniuses also had a predilection for the same colours: the neutral ones that represented a new chromatic simplicity. Black, white and beige were very present in their respective creations. Another example, in terms of fabrics and canvases. While Picasso defended the collage technique to introduce coarser and more austere textures, Chanel defended simpler and more humble fabrics such as cotton or knitted wool. And what about the iconic perfume of the French firm? Even in this detail Picasso and Chanel agree. The Chanel nº5 bottle has a cubic shape with a minimalist and sober label. A container reminiscent of the bottles painted by the painter from Malaga in the Still lifes of 1912. Another simple coincidence?

Le Train Bleu: Léon Woïzikovsky, Lydia Sokolova, Bronislava Nijinska and Anton Dolin, 1924 Photography. 25, 4 x 33,3 cm. Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Music Division

Ballet as a connecting link

Ballet united Pablo Picasso and Gabrielle Chanel. And it was literally. The two geniuses collaborated professionally on two occasions, both with Jean Cocteau: in ‘ Antigone’ (1922) and in Sergei Diaghilev’s Russian ballet ‘ Le Train Bleu’ (1924). The painter from Malaga and the French designer had already known each other since the spring of 1917, probably through Cocteau himself or Misia Sert. Chanel established a long and lasting friendship with both that would introduce her to the circle of Picasso. From then on, Chanel would frequent the Picasso couple, coinciding with the artist’s active participation in the Russian ballets. The creator came to be closely related to the artistic and intellectual world of Paris at the time, to the point of stating: “it is the artists who have taught me rigor.”

Pablo Picasso. Sin título / Arlequín y Polichinela, 1924. Temple sobre papel, 23,7 x 29,5 cm. Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022

A complete exhibition

To delve deeper into the creative and personal relationships between Pablo Picasso and Gabrielle Chanel, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum has opened the doors to one of the most eagerly-awaited exhibitions of the year to show how these two great creative geniuses of the 20th century dialogued, once again bringing together art and fashion in a new exhibition project. ‘Picasso/Chanel’ is organized into four large sections that follow each other in chronological order and cover, approximately, from 1910 to 1930.

The first block is titled ‘The Chanel style and cubism’ and presents the influence of this movement on the French designer’s creations. ‘Olga Picasso’ represents the second chapter and is dedicated to the many beautiful portraits that Picasso made of his first wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, a devoted Chanel client; next to them, some dresses from this initial period of the French designer, of which few examples are preserved. The third section is based on ‘Antigone’, a modern adaptation of Sophocles’ played by Cocteau. This work premiered in Paris in 1922, with sets and masks by Picasso and costumes by Chanel, which are brought together again in this chapter to show their common inspiration in classical Greece. Finally, ‘ Le Train Bleu ‘ is the title of the fourth section and of the ballet produced by Diághilev in 1924, with a libretto by Cocteau, inspired by sports and swimwear. The work ‘ Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race)’ , a small gouache that Diaghilev discovered in Picasso’s workshop, became the image for the curtain of the work, and the painter also accepted the commission to illustrate the program of hand, while Chanel, an enthusiastic athlete, created outfits for dancers inspired by sports models designed for herself and her clients.

The Picasso/Chanel exhibition can be visited at the Thyssen Museum until next January 15th 2023.

The Museum of Design in Barcelona is renewing and expanding one of its most symbolic exhibitions dedicated to the art of dressing with the addition of 12 dresses by 7 new designers to become part of the museum’s collection. Thus the sample “The clothed body. Silhouettes and fashion (1550-2015)” of the curators Teresa Bastardes and Sílvia Ventosa will feature Lydia Delgado, Josep Abril, Teresa Helbig, Krizia Robustella, Miriam Ponsa, Txell Miras, Andrea Ayala, Carlotaoms, La Marthe, Ángel Vilda Celia Vela and Roser Marcé,among other Catalan designers. This re-inauguration took place last Thursday, June 1st and had the support of specialist designers and professionals in the sector.

The exhibition ‘The clothed body. Silhouettes and fashion (1550-2015)’ reviews the history of each era through the different ways of dressing, as governed by moral, social and aesthetic codes of the time. It is well known that fashion imposes canons of beauty and the silhouettes and volumes are modified: nature gives way to artifice. Throughout the last centuries dress has changed proportions and has modified the relation of a person with respect to space and other individuals.

This exhibition specifically reveals how dress modifies the appearance of the body through actions that alternately tend to constrain or liberate it, from the sixteenth century to the present.

Modifying the appearance of the body

The exhibition is structured in how each mode of dress modifies the appearance of the body. The garment:

1. Expands

The dress creates volume via internal structures or via stiff, full fabrics which separate it from the body. The designs widen the figure from the waist to the feet: farthingales, petticoats, crinolines and stowaways or they envelopand widen the silhouette: shawls and capes.

2. Reduces

The dress diminishes the natural forms of the body, especially the chest and waist. In this respect the aim is to constrain the torso with corsets, doublets, fasteners and belts.

3. Lengthens

The dress stretches the image so the body looks taller. The accessories are designed to lengthen the figure: high heels and platforms, hairstyles, hats and dresses with long tails.

4. Profiles

The dress follows the shapes of the body without modifying it. The complements help to mark the silhouette: stockings, gloves, swim-wear and t-shirts of knitwear and elastic fabrics.

5. Uncovers

The dress hints at the silhouette, shows legs and arms and reveals the skin. The garments reveal the figure: transparent fabrics, short dresses, sleeveless and low cut.