It’s also the label’s way to promote print media and bookstores.
Chanel is celebrating 100 years in the United Kingdom—and it’s pulling out all the stops for this special centenary.
Known as a staunch supporter of the arts, with initiatives like the Chanel Cultural Fund, the French luxury fashion house is further strengthening its cultural initiatives with the new Arts & Culture magazine in time for its 100th UK birthday. It is also part of the brand’s push to help promote print media and bookstores around the world. Chanel’s Culture Fund and Yana Peel, president of arts, culture and heritage of the brand, lead the project.
The glossy publication revisits Chanel’s collaborations with artists and cultural institutions over the past five years. Art News describes the magazine as a “visual feast,” with multiple paper types across 250 pages.
Its enigmatic cover features items from founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s personal collection: a statue bust of the designer made by Jacques Lipchitz in 1921 wearing metallic Chanel sunglasses from the brand’s fall 2002 show. The photo was shot by Roe Ethridge, who contributed a visual essay in the magazine that features a few more of Coco’s personal belongings, like jewelry and a letter from French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau.
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Other images in the issue, according to ArtNews, include a white shell-like tray with a gold interior that contains pearls (Coco is known for her love of pearls), a bottle of Chanel No. 5 and a colored seashell; as well as a collage of lion prints, said to be a subtle hint to Coco Chanel’s zodiac sign.
Per The New York Times, the first volume of Arts & Culture shines the spotlight on the “practice and lives of contemporary artists,” and unsurprisingly features loads of promotional Chanel editorial content.” Women’s Wear Daily, meanwhile, reports that the maiden issue of the magazine also includes cultural essays about artists like Tracey Emin, Lu Yang, and Tomás Saraceno. There’s an interview with the photographer Stephen Shore and an article on A.I. art by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Arts & Culture also highlights personalities with whom Chanel has previously collaborated, such as the actress Tilda Swinton and the architect Peter Marino. And because the issue celebrates Chanel’s centenary in the UK, it contains essays on the brand’s history, including a piece by art historian Roselee Goldberg, titled “A Life of Performance: Gabrielle Chanel and the Avant-Garde.”
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“This is Chanel’s first arts and culture magazine and you can feel Gabrielle Chanel’s legacy in its pages,” Peel says, as quoted in the NYT article. “We’re trying to extend that legacy through physical print media.” The team, she adds, is seeing a resurgence of interest in independent magazines and independent bookstores. “We want to give this moment the amplification that we can through the global stage Chanel has.”
The first issue of Arts & Culture Magazine, also known as Vol. 1, will be available in Chanel boutiques in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Bangkok, Berlin, Glasgow, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milan, New York, Paris, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, and Zurich.
The publication will also hit the shelves of select independent book and magazine stores like Casa Magazines in Manhattan, Foreign Exchange News and Tenderbooks in London, RIPE Mags in Glasgow, Libreria Bocca in Milan, and Still Books in Seoul.
