Of course I went and saw the Chanel exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Correction – I went and saw the Coco Chanel exhibit. The exhibit is actually about her, not the brand as such.
I am a major fan of the brand I would say but in all honesty, I actually didn’t know too much about Coco Chanel. My introduction to Chanel was through Karl Lagerfeld so I know quite a bit about him and his relationship with the brand. So the exhibit information was new to me.
I am not going to go into her history and all of that but yes, she was quite a woman. With the background and upbringing she had, making it into a business the way she did at such a young age is an amazing story. The exhibit also didn’t shy away from talking about her Nazi connection although I have to say it was slightly vague about which side she was actually on. They had displays of her letters to Winston Churchill and so on and have broadly left it to the viewers to make up their mind so we will never know for sure.
I did want to mention two things about the exhibit. One, they recreated the famous mirror stairway from Coco Chanel’s apartment for the exhibit which was beautifully done and such an extravagance. Trust V&A to pull this off! I have been annoyed with V&A before – sometimes the exhibits get really crowded and felt unsafe – but you can’t fault them the effort (I still remember this exhibit). The curation of V&A exhibits is excellent and of course, the way they manage to source the items to be displayed is unparalleled.
One, is the room with the tweed jacket. It is absolutely wonderful. Top to bottom and everywhere you look, there are Chanel tweed suits of every type and colour. The Chanel tweed jacket was one of my holy grail items and I finally managed to find the one I wanted (thats the one I am wearing in the first photo) last year. I hunted for it for almost 2 years stalking every second hand Chanel seller! But what a find. Its 2013 Karl Lagerfeld one and fits my style perfectly. I will definitely post more pictures in it soon enough.
See you guys next week. If I get myself organised enough you might see my books posts on Mondays as well. But I am definitely not promising anything!
– Anisha
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