CHANEL – The Métiers d’art 2021/22 Show – Animated Film by REMEMBERS Studio

The CHANEL Métiers d’art collection

Since 2002, the CHANEL Métiers d’art collection has been an annual rendezvous that pays tribute to the virtuoso hands of fashion. The one presented on Tuesday December 7th 2021 will be more so than ever, as Virginie Viard, Artistic Director of the Fashion collections, has chosen le19M, the luminous new building and beating heart of the Métiers d’art, as the venue for the show.
The Métiers d’art bring together several hundred embroiderers, feather workers, paruriers, goldsmiths, pleaters, shoemakers, hatters, milliners, glove makers, tanners, leatherworkers, as well as silk and cashmere experts based in France, Italy, Spain and Scotland. Through a creative dialogue, the set of savoir-faire perpetuated and constantly reinvented by these artisans contributes to rendering each creation an exceptional piece.
This fruitful conversation between the House of CHANEL and the Métiers d’art was initiated by Gabrielle Chanel herself, who called upon the skills of Paris’ best artisans, including the shoemaker Massaro, the flower maker Lemarié and the goldsmith Goossens, all three of which have joined the Métiers d’art. Exacting and inventive, the couturière encouraged both their experiments and their desire for perfection. The House of CHANEL has been pursuing active partnerships ever since and from the 1980s onwards strengthened them further at a time when some of these art ateliers were in danger of disappearing for lack of investment and successors. As early as 1985, CHANEL began the process of acquiring these métiers, as a means to ensure their durability, to allow for creative research, to support their development and to train new artisans. Today, the Métiers d’art bring together some forty Maisons d’art and factories, representing more than six thousand, six hundred employees of all generations and backgrounds who work with CHANEL and other great names in fashion in France and around the world.
The preservation of this heritage goes hand in hand with the need to focus on the future, to inspire new vocations and to experiment with new techniques. For this to happen it became necessary to embody this patrimony with an actual place, le19M. This year, eleven Maisons d’art have been brought together at this new site dedicated to the Métiers d’art and designed by CHANEL, located between the municipality of Aubervilliers and the 19th arrondissement of Paris: the embroiderers Lesage — along with Lesage Intérieurs and its School of Art Embroidery — and Montex — with its MTX decoration department —, the shoemaker Massaro, the feather and flower maker Lemarié, the milliner and hatter Maison Michel, the pleater Lognon, the flou specialist Paloma and the goldsmith Goossens. These exceptional artisans weave, embroider and craft in direct contact with the CHANEL Creation Studio and the studios of the other fashion houses that call on them. To this prestigious list is added Eres, a reference brand of lingerie and swimwear, renowned for its savoir-faire and creativity.
Designed by the architect Rudy Ricciotti, le19M is a highly innovative, triangular-shaped 25,500 m2 building that meets the most exacting environmental standards. Six hundred people work there in the calm of the light-filled ateliers, crossing paths on the concrete-wire-clad walkways, which echo the urban forest they overlook.
A place of patient labour, research and experimentation, le19M is also a living multidisciplinary space, open to the city and turned towards others, dedicated to weaving a link with its environment, notably through its gallery, la Galerie du 19M. It is here, where the fabrics will have been pleated, embroidered and embellished with feathers and flowers, where the jewellery is set and hammered, where the shoes and hats are fashioned, that the CHANEL 2021/22 Métiers d’art collection will be unveiled in a veritable celebration of these exceptional savoir-faire.

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