Peruse Chanel’s new Métiers d’Art collection

Chanel’s latest artisanal collection looks far east – and close to home – for thematic inspiration. By Christian Barker

Featuring the maison’s ambassadors Liu Wen (pictured above), Tilda Swinton (below, right) and leading model Lulu Tenney (below, left), Chanel’s 2024/25 Métiers d’Art campaign traces a poetic journey from the French capital to Hangzhou’s dreamlike West Lake.

Inspired by the ornate Chinese Coromandel screens adorning Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s apartment at 31 rue Cambon, Paris, the collection finds its muse in the misty waters of Lake Xihu, a 200km journey south from Shanghai, where the runway show took place late last year. Shot at the same location by Mikael Jansson, the campaign conjures a dialogue between continents and centuries, casting Hangzhou as both backdrop and reverie in Chanel’s latest voyage of style.

Mademoiselle Chanel was a passionate collector of intricately lacquered Coromandel screens – known under this moniker in the west because they were shipped to Europe via India’s Coromandel coast. “I’ve loved Chinese screens since I was 18 years old,” Chanel once remarked. “I nearly fainted with joy when, entering a Chinese shop, I saw a Coromandel for the first time… Screens were the first thing I bought”. Today, the maison’s most important clients are often invited to the immaculately preserved apartment on rue Cambon, where numerous screens acquired by the legendary couturier remain on display – clearly, serving as ongoing inspiration for the Chanel design team.

The Metiers d’Art collections are a celebration of the maison’s in-house craftspeople and the artisanal partners helping execute Chanel’s designers’ visions. These include goldsmiths Goossens (whose founder collaborated with Coco herself in the 1950s); milliners Maison Michel; featherworkers, handstitched flowermakers and textile embellishers Lemarié; pleaters Atelier Lognon; embroiderers Atelier Montex; embroiderers/tweedmakers Lesage; and custom shoemaking maison, Massaro.

By supporting these ateliers and the several hundred artisans under the Métiers d’Art banner, Chanel helps keep time-honoured handcraftsmanship skills alive in a time of increasing automation, artificial intelligence – and unintelligent artifice.