An inside look at the V&A’s extraordinary Chanel archive

‘It was important to go back to the garments,’ says V&A fashion curator Oriole Cullen about the museum’s latest blockbuster fashion exhibition, ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’ (which we previewed earlier this year). ‘Coco Chanel’s personal life is something that people are very drawn to and interested in. But less is said about the clothes.’

It is not difficult to see the appeal of Gabrielle Chanel’s colourful life story. There was her poor upbringing in a French nunnery, a youth spent as a shop girl and café singer, and the opening of her first millinery shop on Paris’ Rue Cambon in 1910. Then her dalliances with high society, fated romances, summers on the French Riviera with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, and journeys to golden age Hollywood to costume its biggest stars. 

Inside ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’ at the V&A

And though ‘Fashion Manifesto’ uses these moments as backdrops, the focus remains largely on her design sensibility, which set a template for the modern woman’s wardrobe. ‘She defined her approach to fashion quite early on,’ says Cullen. ‘It’s about chic, simple clothing, looking at movement and the body. These elements she creates – the jersey, the little black dress, the suit – these are the things she comes back to time and again and refines them.’

The Storey Studio-designed exhibition is divided into ten parts and begins with a 1916 marinière blouse, one of the French couturier’s oldest surviving pieces. Crafted from fine-gauge silk jersey and tied loosely around the waist, it is decidedly modern – it would not take a stretch to imagine one of the current exhibition’s attendees wandering past in it. Also on show are early iterations of her signature garments and a staggering display of two-piece suits encased in double-height glass boxes, as well as a recreation of the faceted mirrored staircases at her Rue Cambon apartment, where she would stage client presentations.

Particularly striking are her diaphanous evening gowns (some pictured here, photographed within the V&A archive by Oskar Proctor). ‘They’re very drapey,’ says Cullen. ‘They aren’t worn over lots of petticoats so they move beautifully.’ A Parisian glamour is suggested in glimmering surface decoration from sequins and paillettes on otherwise minimal gowns. Her garments are very minimal and clean, but to use something like all-over sequins is amazingly effective. It’s not superfluous decoration, it’s just the body of the dress.’

The exhibition spans Chanel’s six-decade-long career in fashion, from 1910 to her final S/S 1971 collection (Chanel would die in 1971 in her apartment in the Ritz Hotel Paris). Cullen finds her later work particularly fascinating, transgressive in its use of colour and gleaming contemporary fabrics like lamé. ‘Some of the colours and textiles she was using were incredible,’ says Cullen. ‘We wanted to bring that vibrancy, because she was experimenting all the time.’

What Cullen hopes people take away from the show is the idea of Chanel as a ‘fashion maverick’ and early brand-builder. ‘When she started, couturiers weren’t really received in polite society; you might have known their names, but not what they looked like. But Chanel changed that. She was happy to be front and centre.’ 

‘Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto’ is on show until 25 February at the V&A, London SW7.

This article appears in the November 2023 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

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