A woman and her bag. Or rather her bags. It’s a timeless story of fashion and of love between practicality and aesthetic passion. Karl Lagerfeld tells it here through a prism that transcends generations, styles and eras. For the Spring-Summer 2018 handbag campaign, the designer has invited model Kaia Gerber to Mademoiselle Chanel’s apartment. A world in which every piece of furniture, every object is a bearer of authenticity, emotions, memories.
Like the fawn suede sofa with quilted cushions immortalised in photographs of Gabrielle Chanel surrounded by her models and her dearest friends, and on which today Kaia Gerber strikes a pose. Time has no hold on this refuge, the soul of Gabrielle Chanel remains there, and Karl Lagerfeld takes care to bring it ever more to life.
The CHANEL handbag is an icon, a pure concentrate of dreams, of history, of a luxury meticulously fashioned. The 11.12 bag, in richly embroidered tweed or playful in coloured transparent PVC, illustrates a mood, a desire and travels through time, essential to every silhouette. The last-born, CHANEL’s GABRIELLE handbag, is, just like its predecessors, both practical and elegant. Its volume, its suppleness fitted on a rigid base and its strap allowing for multiple ways of wearing it, distinguishes it from the other bags of the House. The Boy CHANEL bag reveals a taste for the masculine/feminine at CHANEL, Gabrielle Chanel’s own borrowings from menswear and notably the hunter’s cartridge belts she wore over the shoulder and which provided direct inspiration. Finally, a vanity case and a camera case with their original shapes swathed in exotic leathers or charms.
In this new campaign, the diversity of the CHANEL bags is made clear, and yet they’re all linked by an eternal, instantly recognisable style. The CHANEL bag is a true fashion manifesto, a history of women, all women.
Amanda Harlech, Karl Lagerfeld’s "outside pair of eyes", welcomed 10 influential women from the fashion world to Mademoiselle Chanel’s apartment at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. There she had a tête-à-tête with each of them to discuss CHANEL style through the bags of the House, their relationship with CHANEL bags, their own fetish bag and their way of seeing the bag as an extension of oneself and as an integral part of a look. It was also a chance for the guests to share their impression of Gabrielle Chanel’s legendary apartment, and the emotions they felt to be surrounded by the designer’s treasures. An endless source of inspiration for Karl Lagerfeld, it was here that he recently photographed model Kaia Gerber for the CHANEL Spring-Summer 2018 bag campaign.
