Chanel’s annual Métiers d’Art show – a traveling showcase of demi-couture-level craftsmanship – made a grand return to New York City this past week. The highly anticipated event, held at an abandoned downtown subway station, marked the first Chanel show in New York since Karl Lagerfeld’s 2018 Métiers d’Art presentation at the Met’s Temple of Dendur. It also marked the sophomore collection for Chanel’s new artistic director, Matthieu Blazy, and his very first Métiers d’Art outing for the House. Each year since 2002, Chanel has hosted a Métiers d’Art spectacle in a different city, conceived to celebrate and preserve the work of the House’s artisan ateliers. Blazy embraced this mandate with zeal: “It needs to demonstrate know-how,” he has said of the Métiers tradition. Accordingly, the New York show was a sumptuous homage to Chanel’s 11 specialized Métiers d’Art craft studios that are united at the le19M hub in Paris, all while weaving a love letter to The Big Apple’s inimitable and kaleidoscopic spirit.
