MADEMOISELLE PRIVE

Saatchi Gallery
London

13th October - 1st November 2015

A journey through the origins of CHANEL's creations capturing the charismatic personality and irreverent spirit of Mademoiselle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld.

 

 

Karl Lagerfeld at the opening of Mademoiselle Prive

 

You should definitely make time for Chanel’s three-storey Mademoiselle Privé exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery. It presents a fascinating journey through the house’s past that’s thoroughly grounded within today’s digital age. 

 

Don’t forget to download the Mademoiselle Privé app before you visit. Hold up your smartphone to a blank canvas space to see it transformed with a 360^o view of Mademoiselle’s famous 31 Rue Cambon apartment in Paris. You can also use the app to book a programme of embroidery and flower making workshops for adults and children alike staged by Chanel subsidiaries Lesage and Lemarié.  



 

 

Visitors enter the exhibition itself via a garden designed by this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winners, landscape artists, the Rich Brothers. Dubbed ‘The English Garden’, it’s an oasis of calm. The horticulturally-inclined will also enjoy the indoor jardin à la française on the first floor, where one can perch on a bench while inhaling the aroma from the manicured mini hedges.

 

 

The Chanel Gardens at th Saatchi Gallery

 

Coco Chanel’s famous love of numerology comes well represented. The Pièce de résistance is a supersize reimagining of a Chanel N^o5 scent making chamber, an olfactory engine room complete with giant hermatically sealed vats flashing analogue brand messages and opening on loop to spewing clouds of dry ice like the laboratory of a very fragrant James Bond villain.

 

 

The Fragrance Room

 

The main event is the display of pieces from Lagerfeld’s casino-themed AW15 haute couture show paired with re-editions of Gabrielle Chanel’s 1932 haute joillerie collection. They come surrounded by 17 celebrity shots such as Rita Ora, Alice Dellal, Julianne Moore, Lily-Rose Depp, who populated the show’s croupier tables. They had been photographed by Lagerfeld himself each wearing a show look and corresponding piece from the Bijoux Diamants collection. Forget about traditional glass-encased displays; high tech laser sensors set off alarms to see off the over enthusiastic.

 

 

Clothes, Jewellery and Portraits within the Exhibition 

 

There’s also a cinema screening a film starring Geraldine Chaplin as the ghost of Gabrielle Chanel revisiting her former HQ and uttering gems such as ‘I haven’t had a cigarette in 40 years’ before lighting up on the sofa and going head to head with Karl about his modernisation of the brand.

 

 

A Library inside the Exhibition 

Gabrielle Chanel

 

Saatchi Gallery, Duke Of York's HQ, King's Rd, London SW3 4RY. saatchigallery.com