But that has been the foundation of Chanel for the past 40 years now.
Virginie Mouzat had that amazing quote about Chanel: « Du tres accessible très cher ».
It’s a language and an aesthetic people understand so it’s accessible. But the price point and the quality (for the most part)is exclusive.
In essence, Chanel is practical. So the way to have people go to the stores to buy fashion is to have a strong fashion proposition. I have many Chanel jackets and dresses. At the end, it’s a Chanel tweed jacket/dress but sometimes, the tiny detail somehow makes the difference. The same for blouses. When Karl did prints, I generally bought a printed blouse.
But then, again it’s only my POV. I strongly believe in seasonal stuff. Basics bores me. I can go to COS, Joseph for a basic. I go for the statement of the season. I may wear it this season and next year. I still wear my blouse from ss2008.
And the beauty about a brand like Chanel is that customers wants that. The problem of a brand like Chanel is that it’s more about brand loyalty than real style. But it’s an unfair advantage that they have to exploit. People have internalized that Chanel is timeless.
That’s really what makes the idea of someone like Slimane not interesting for me. It’s perfect on paper but in reality, he will not challenge the Chanel aesthetic (Karl did the rock skinny girls in monochrome) and he will not challenge himself. But then again, I don’t want to sound as redundant as his fans championing his takeover.
I think coming from the perspective of menswear design and from a masculine gaze, I am more accustomed to look at fashion from changes in smaller parameters, slower-paced fundamental changes and even from the crafts perspective, the idea that fabrics are woven and garments constructed with the intent to have a longer cycle of usage than the majority of their female counterparts.
It is because of that specific view that I look at contemporary womenswear design and it’s current protagonists with the suspicion that design is merely an exercise in creativity, rather than a marriage of utility and aesthetics, which is something that menswear tailoring and the vocabulary of work- and military garments taught me. You often mention about the fabulous silks in Armani’s repertoire and I could very well say that too about the particularities in the weave of Japanese wool gabardine used by Yohji Yamamoto in comparison to the inferior quality wools from Italy used by companies such as The Row.
I think with that in mind, it’s only normal that I feel a closer attachment to those designers who managed to create a body-of-work with a clear definition what it is and what it is not about and who created collections that seamlessly blend from one into the other - Jil Sander, Yohji Yamamoto, Alaia, Ann Demeulemeester - Despite the fact that certain decades were largely unfavorable to their point of view, I respect a lot that they stayed cohesive to their identity much in the way you can alsays recognize a Basquiat painting or music by bands such as The Cure or Depeche Mode for the identity they carved.
I understand that a lot of women and fashion followers in general are more in search of what’s new and differentiating one from the other season but that idea of starting from a blank slate every few months without it standing in context of what was created before, of creativity organically evolving from one to the next chapter, feels extremely alienating to me.
From that perspective I think that you observed well that the audience Hedi speaks to is not necessarily a follower of fashion but a singular idea of style he created, much in the way people bought Helmut Lang, Jil Sander or Martin Margiela.
