THE Chanel Mademoiselle Privé exhibition closes this week, after being open to the London public for almost three weeks, taking over all three floors of the Saatchi Gallery.

As a maze of wonders, going up and down, from room to room, each space in the show is dedicated to a different aspect of the brand’s fame and history – recording the milestones of the house of Chanel under the guidance of both founder Gabrielle Chanel and also Karl Lagerfeld who took on the post as a head designer and creative director in 1983 in order to “make something” of the brand that was in decline at the time.

The journey starts at Chanel’s studio on 31 Rue Cambon in Paris with the infamous mirror staircase, recreated for this occasion, on top of which she used to secretly sit during her shows to watch the audience’s reactions to her designs.

Moving on, visitors encounter Gabrielle Chanel’s first boutique in Deauville with a display of all-white hats and hat boxes and animated passers-by walking past the window; next there is a room dedicated to the Scottish influence which resulted in her love of tweeds which the visitors got to experience later on among other often used materials in the Sensory room.

In the following room, there was a giant necklace spinning in a cage to honour Chanel’s one-and-only jewellery collection, created in 1932, called Bijoux de Diamants, accompanied by a commentary by actress Geraldine Chaplin as Coco Chanel – a part Chaplin’s played before in Lagerfeld’s two latest short films, Reincarnation and The Return, in the background.

Chaplin appears again in the exhibition – this time on a screen, as Lagerfeld presents another short film where Coco Chanel is resurrected as a ghost and, upon making her way to her studio, is outraged at all the changes made by Lagerfeld, she bumps into him sitting in her/his office and the conversation they would have had if they ever got the chance to meet follows, the theme of this dialogue being Lagerfeld’s assumption – which he has expressed before – that “Chanel would have hated” him.

At the Chanel N°5 laboratory, the components of the popular perfume is presented in large wells containing bright-coloured liquids as they were continuously opening and closing. Then on the top floor where the workshops – such as embroidering and decorating one of the symbols of the house, the white gardenia – take place, a talk is given about the history, the ingredients and how N°5 is made.

Some of the best haute couture pieces, some of which designed specifically for the exhibition by Karl Lagerfeld, are showcased in two rooms bathed in dim light along with the brand’s haute jewellery, accompanied by a series of photos of the Chanel muses wearing the exhibited designs such as Keira Knightley, Vanessa Paradis, Lily-Rose Depp or Stella Tennant gracing the walls.

Photographer: Olivier Saillant

Published 29/10/2015 at theglassmagazine.com