In case you missed it, Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto, a blockbuster Chanel retrospective, will open at London’s V&A this month. The expansive show features over 200 items that reflect Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s impact on fashion, along with the design signatures – from the tweed skirt suit to the 2.55 handbag – she established at the house. “She created things that didn’t date, so she was working against fashion, in a way,” curator Oriole Cullen says in the September issue of British Vogue.
Excitement for the exhibition is also mounting at the Knightsbridge HQ of auction house Bonhams, which will be hosting a sale – “The Art of Luxury: Chanel” – to coincide with the exhibition opening. Taking place online from 11 to 21 September, the sale is jam-packed with collector’s items from Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard’s tenures, including ready-to-wear, bags and jewellery. A host of costume jewellery items – beloved by Rihanna, Miley and Beyoncé – have piqued Vogue’s interest, designed by Gripoix, Victoire de Castellane (who oversaw Chanel’s costume jewellery from 1984 until her move to Dior in 1998), and Goossens, one of Chanel’s esteemed Métiers d’art ateliers.
“The Chanel auction features almost 100 lots of incredible costume jewellery from the ’70s right up to 2023,“ says Meg Randell, head of UK and Europe designer handbags and fashion at Bonhams. “Whilst all Chanel jewellery tends to be popular at auction, I was particularly looking for pieces from the first 10 years of Karl’s tenure at Chanel, as pieces from the ’80s and early ’90s are highly collectible and can fetch huge prices at auction.”
Here – with Randell’s specialist insight – we round up Vogue’s highlights from the sale.
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