The Mademoiselle Privé exhibition for Chanel arrived on 23rd October and finished on Friday 1st November at the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square. It was a chance to take a sneak peek at the world of Chanel.
Although we had been busy, I wanted to visit the exhibition on Sunday evening before the show closed.
When we arrived, however, there was a long, long queue of people waiting patiently to get into the exhibition. Instead, I queued up the following Monday, the last week before the exhibition closed.
I’ve always considered Gabrielle Chanel to be an inspirational business woman.
I think of her as one of the first women entrepreneurs of the 20th century. She figured out how to be successful in business at a time when it was almost impossible to succeed as a woman. I can only imagine the kind of obstacles that she must have had to overcome.
Each room was a journey through her work. As you entered, the first exhibit was about her apartment and Salon in Paris. The accompanying App for mobile devices in Android or Apple used your location and revealed more about the exhibition as you walked through each room.
What I liked about the exhibition was that it told the story of her creativity through the eyes of the current Creative Director, Karl Lagerfeld. She taking the lead, he acting as the curator in a film that was part of the exhibition.
As I walked round, it made me wonder about her life, she must have had such an extraordinary will to succeed.
The exhibition included a recreation of the staircase in her Salon. It was mirrored, faceted along the curve of the wall along on one side, with a sleek elegant metal hand rail. It is said, that she designed the staircase so that she could stand in one place and see what was happening on every floor.
There was something about the detail in the design of the stairs that reminded me of the attention to detail of the cantilevered glass stairs in Apple stores that seem suspended in air.
If you have ever visited an Apple store, each of them has the same design features and a set of glass stairs. They are similar in a way, as both have gone beyond the products they designed and made sure their surroundings were stylised and designed to showcase their brand.
If she were alive today, I wonder whether she would be in fashion or whether she would have ventured into technology.
I loved the perfume and garden room exhibits, the boxwood in the garden was laid out featuring intertwining C’s.
I was expecting the perfume not only to be on display in terms of the iconic bottle designs but also the unmistakable scent of No5.
The perfume room was designed to be a visual impact to see rather than an experience in terms of scent.
Chanel No5 was launched in the 1920s and is still one of the best-selling perfumes today. At the time, it embodied what Chanel was searching for to describe femininity:
It was what I was waiting for. A perfume like nothing else. A woman’s perfume, with the scent of a woman.”
The ingredient that makes Chanel No5 ahead of its time was the use of Aldehydes which hadn’t been used in such quantities before Chanel. She worked with the Perfumier Earnest Beaux to create the iconic perfume.
He combined the aldehydes with Ylang-Ylang, neroli, as well as Jasmine, Mayrose, Sandalwood and Vetiver.
I think she must have liked to break with tradition and must have chosen to work with Earnest Beaux because he wasn’t afraid of challenging conventions as well.
I was thinking that in this aspect again, she was ahead of her time, breaking with tradition and innovating through her perfume, fashion and jewellery.
The exhibit included a number of workshops on the top floor, the Chanel No5 workshop was an opportunity to learn more about the fragrance.
I left the exhibition inspired by the notion that she was brave, took risks and never settled for anything less than perfection, even in the smallest details of her work. I think that’s what I learned, to strive for perfection in the detail.
hmm, I think some Chanel fragrance, will be on my Christmas list this year, either to give as a gift or to receive, something to wear to remind me of the exhibition as inspiration every day. Can’t wait…..
