Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, put the success of Friday’s announcement that Chanel has acquired the heritage shirtmaker Charvet, squarely on the shoulders of Chanel artistic director Matthieu Blazy and the almost immediate rapport that Blazy kindled with siblings Anne-Marie and Jean-Claude Colban, who today run Charvet, bought by their father in the 1960s.
There’s major romance in this Chanel buys Charvet business story, spring-boarded by the intense love affair between Coco Chanel and Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel. As a stand-alone human relationship story between the couple, the facts are cinematic.
Like Anne before him, Matthieu Blazy knew nothing of this love story until he began going throughn the Chanel archives. Armed with the knowledge that Coco Chanel bought shirts for her lover Boy Capel at Charvet — and probably borrowed them regularly — Blazy decided to introduce himself to the famous shirtmaker, then owned by siblings Anne-Marie and Jean-Claude Colban.
