Chanel Couture Jewelry Unveils The Coromandel Collection Inspired By Coco's Screens
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Whenever she moved her domicile, from the chic 16th Arrondissement to the Ritz Paris (and, later, Switzerland), Gabrielle Chanel took her Coromandel screens with her to “upholster” her home, writes Vogue. “I’m like a snail. I carry my house with me,” she once remarked to Claude Delay, her friend and biographer. Chanel's most beloved pieces, the ones she kept all her life and considered the doors to her private world, were the 17th- and 18th-century Coromandel folding screens she picked up in 1910 with her great love, Boy Capel. Today, these ornate, opulent black lacquer screens adorn the salons of private apartments at 31 Rue Cambon.
On Friday, Gabrielle Chanel's beloved Coromandel screens serve as the inspiration behind the brand's couture jewelry collection to be unveiled on the Place Vendôme in advance of the couture collections.
Semi-figurative floral “calligraphy,” stylized landscapes, Asian bestiaries, and even a small lacquer box are just some of the highlights in the Coromandel Collection, which debuts exclusively here. The important Horizon Lointain (“far horizon”) openwork choker reprises selected Coromandel motifs—clouds, mountains, camellias—in yellow gold, platinum, diamonds and mother-of-pearl. The Calligraphie Florale cuff is striking both for its composition in white gold, white and brownish diamonds, pink sapphires, black spinets, and tsavorite garnets as for its handling of negative space.
Meanwhile, the remarkable, articulated Recto Verso double-sided bracelet—panels of white and yellow gold and colored sapphires on one side; onyx and white and yellow diamonds and yellow sapphires on the other—is depicted here in gouache form because it will only just emerge from the workshops in time for the first client previews tomorrow.
‘Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War’ by American journalist Hal Vaughan was published this week in the US by Knopf, prompting Chanel to issue a statement refuting the book’s claims that (Gabriel) Coco Chanel was a member of Germany’s Abwehr intelligence agency.
“She would hardly have formed a relationship with the [Jewish Wertheimer] family” — which currently owns the entire Chanel brand empire — “or counted Jewish people among her close friends and professional partners,” the company said in a statement.
Vaughan disagrees, claiming that Chanel’s anti-Semitism led her to seize control of her famous Chanel No. 5 fragrance from the Wertheimers, using French laws allowing the expropriation of Jewish property. The Wertheimers had secretly moved control of the company to a Christian prior to the Nazi invasion of France. Chanel No. 5 perfume was made in New Jersey with illegally imported ingredients, leaving Coco Chanel horrified.
The author relied on recently declassified documents that he says prove Chanel was recruited on spy missions by Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage for Abwehr, who was a known professional spy in Paris and the Mediterranean, reporting to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right hand man.
Vaughn says her code name was Westminster. After the war, Coco Chanel spent nine years in Switzerland, in exile with Dincklage. She eventually returned to Paris at age 71 to reinvent and rebuild the House of Chanel.
The House of Chanel also asserts as proof of Coco Chanel’s pro-Jewish attitudes that she approached Winston Churchill about “acting as an intermediary between the Allies and the Germans for a peace settlement known as Operation Modelhut.
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants has called for the fashion house to launch an investigation into Chanel’s wartime deeds.
Coco (‘little pet’) Chanel lived at the Ritz in Paris but also maintained private quarters on the third floor of the Rue Cambon building that houses the Chanel store. The second floor is devoted to couture dressing rooms and a workshop is on the fourth floor.
Chanel’s use of beige suede upholstery was revolutionary at the time, creating a mix of old and new, classical and modern. Enjoy images of Coco Chanel’s Rue Cambon apartment.