Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld: the two faces of Chanel

Ahead of Chanel’s Mademoiselle Privé exhibition in Seoul on June 23, we deconstruct the maison’s two driving forces.

Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld are the two driving forces behind the illustrious house of Chanel. Roger Schall / Collection Schall; Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty Images

Chanel is all set to throw open the doors to its Mademoiselle Privé exhibition at Seoul's D Museum. As upscale a version of a travelling exhibition as is possible (this is Chanel, after all), Mademoiselle Privé offers an extraordinary glimpse into the behind-the-scenes thinking of one of the world's most famous brands, and Seoul will be the second city to host it.

The story of Chanel is already well-documented, of course. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was an orphan who became a fashion powerhouse. Her arrival in Paris in 1913, at the age of 30, marked the start of a style revolution that saw her redefine the way women dress, overturning conventions with a fearlessness that belied her petite frame. She turned drab jersey into comfortable dresses (freeing women from the tyranny of corsetry); transformed the fisherman’s uniform of striped top and wide-legged trousers into essential wear; and elevated black from the colour of mourning to the epitome of chic with her little black dress.

Throughout a life brimming with glamour, creativity and famous friends, Gabrielle gave the world pieces that are truly deserving of the term iconic. Consider the Chanel N°5 fragrance (created in 1921), the quilted 2.55 handbag (whose shoulder strap freed women’s hands in 1955), the bouclé tweed jacket (which appeared in 1954) or the now indispensable LBD. Years ahead of her time, Gabrielle was a force whose influence is felt almost 50 years after her death.

As such, it is easy to forget that there was ever a dip in the fortunes of the house of Chanel. Deprived of its leader after Gabrielle’s death in 1971, the label lost direction, and by the time Karl Lagerfeld was invited to take over as creative director in 1983, the company’s former sheen had dulled, seemingly too interlinked with its founder to survive her passing.

Despite being advised not to, Lagerfeld seized the opportunity with his customary gusto, and has spent the past 34 years returning the brand to its former glory. Through a skilful blend of tenacity, stemming from his relentless creative output, and a mindful adherence to the codes and blueprints created by Gabrielle, Lagerfeld has assured his link to the company, while magnifying hers.

The clever interplay of historical storytelling and relentless modernity is crucial to the allure of the house, and is one of the many themes explored in the exhibition in South Korea, which begins on June 23. The location is undoubtedly driven by the need to expand into non-traditional markets – and what better way to seduce an audience than with the intoxicating tale of Coco and Karl?

Mademoiselle Privé's previous incarnation in London opened in October 2015 at the Saatchi Gallery, and the show offered an expansive, but, ultimately, deeply personal glimpse into the creative worlds of both Ms Chanel and Mr Lagerfeld. Bristling with technology (which has been updated for a tech-savvy South Korean audience), the London show was augmented with an app, to allow visitors to see things in otherwise blank rooms, and generally immerse themselves in the overall experience. Similarly, the new exhibition in Seoul will be a meandering journey – both physical and digital – that will take visitors on a tour of places significant to Gabrielle, including her famous apartment above her boutique on rue Cambon, where, incidentally, she never actually slept, and her first dress shop in Deauville in 1913. The entrance to the exhibition will be through a staircase topped by a ceiling inspired by the pattern of Gabrielle's Coromandel lacquer screens. This will lead to the Deauville room, filled with hat boxes and mini-films evocative of her first boutique.

Given the gusto with which Gabrielle approached life, it is perhaps surprising to learn of her deeply held superstitions. Despite being driven, outspoken and fearless – a feminist before the term really existed – she attributed power and meaning to seemingly random objects. Her apartment in rue Cambon, carefully preserved after her death, was filled with symbols that held tremendous sway over her life. In the Seoul exhibition, an entire room will be dedicated to highlighting how these symbols became the codes around which she built her inimitable creations: from the seemingly innocuous palette of black, white and red, which she used exhaustively through her work, to her favourite flower, the delicate camellia, which was reworked into brooches and decorative details.

She was also known to believe in numerology and was drawn to the number five. Ahead of the launch of her famed fragrance, she reportedly selected the fifth sample, saying to perfumer Ernest Beaux: “I present my dress collections on the fifth of May, the fifth month of the year, and so we will let this sample number five keep the name it has already; it will bring good luck.” In the exhibition, visitors will be taken on an olfactory voyage, which starts with an custom-designed pipe organ with glass vials – each containing the raw ingredients essential to Chanel N°5 – and culminates in an airlock permeated with the scent.

Another part of Mademoiselle Privé is dedicated to Chanel's jewellery, and includes a re-edition of Gabrielle's Bijoux de Diamants high-jewellery collection. Declaring diamonds to have "the greatest value in the smallest volume", this was the only jewellery collection that she designed herself. Created in 1932, it was meant for an exhibition in London that never came to be. Not surprisingly, few original pieces survived. The rest, no doubt, were reconfigured into other pieces; however, as part of Mademoiselle Privé, the collection has been faithfully recreated. Lagerfeld persuaded 17 long-time muses, including Keira Knightley, Rinko Kikuchi, Lily-Rose Depp and Kristen Stewart, to model the jewels in portraits that he shot himself, and which will be displayed at the exhibition. Elsewhere, in two neon-lit rooms, a lineup of a dozen stark mannequins will showcase Lagerfeld-designed haute couture dresses. The journey will end with the screening of a series of short movies directed by Lagerfeld, including The Return, an imaginary conversation between him and Gabrielle, which has been interpreted by actress Geraldine Chaplin.

Lagerfeld’s contribution to the Chanel ethos cannot be underestimated. Having headed the label for more than three decades, his tenure is now only nine years shorter than Gabrielle’s, and both their names are indelibly linked to the brand. Sharing the same unyielding desire to change the world, they are bound by deep-seated similarities. Both, for example, have a tendency to be fluid with their personal histories. No doubt stemming from her traumatic youth, Gabrielle gave different versions of her life. She told some that her father sailed to America to find fame and fortune, when, in reality, following the death of her mother, her father sent his sons to work and dumped his daughters at an orphanage. Other times she altered her age, and the age at which she lost her mother. Lagerfeld, too, has been known to be elusive about his year of birth, despite the baptism register in Hamburg confirming his arrival in this world on September 10, 1933.

While fibbing about one’s age is hardly new, there is a sense that both choose to shroud themselves in a cloak of mystery. They are also twinned in their prodigious work ethics. Chanel worked from 1913 until the outbreak of the Second World War, and then again from 1955 until her death. Appalled at the new restrictive clothing of wasp waists and vast skirts being imposed on women in the mid-1950s, she emerged from retirement in her early 70s to, once again, provide women with chic, comfortable clothes. Lagerfeld, in comparison, launched his career in 1954, and has continued at a relentless pace until this day, when, at the age of 83, he creates eight collections a year for Chanel alone. This number, of course, excludes the collections he develops for Fendi and his eponymous Karl Lagerfeld brand.

Both designers also share an impeccable attention to detail. When he creates his biannual haute couture collections, Lagerfeld produces sketches so detailed that they include the cut of the shoulder and the types of seams to be used. Before putting pen to paper, he has already finished the entire collection in his mind, and knows precisely how he wants each piece to look, down to the buttons. Likewise, Gabrielle’s legendary quest for the perfect jacket saw her redo the sleeve seams countless times, insisting that the key to a good fit lay in the cut of the armhole. To ensure her suits fitted exactly the way she wanted, she had clients climb up and down a step to ensure everything retained the correct shape during movement.

Given that Gabrielle was such a strong and determined character – and not above using a little smokescreen when it suited her – it is perhaps not a coincidence that the dominant feature of her apartment in rue Cambon was a curved, mirrored staircase, which had multiple surfaces that create endless facets, each reflecting a subtly different perspective. The feature was painstakingly moved to London for the first Mademoiselle Privé exhibition and will hopefully reappear in Seoul.

However overbearing, Lagerfeld seems undaunted by the ghost of his predecessor. In 2011, he was quoted as saying: “What I do, Coco would have hated. The label has an image and it’s up to me to update it. I do what she never did. I had to find my mark. I had to go from what Chanel was to what it should be, could be, what it had been, to something else.”

Like Gabrielle, Lagerfeld has admitted to being superstitious, and will not allow anyone to wear something from a collection before it is shown on the runway. And, like her, he is an innovator, totally unafraid of upsetting the apple cart. Always searching and exploring, Lagerfeld has become encoded into the very DNA of Chanel, and is as integral to the house as its fascinating founder. The big question, of course, is who could possibly follow.