Chanel Will Hold Its Métiers d’Art Show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art This December

Steff Yotka
Updated

Chanel in NYC

Karl Lagerfeld descends the staircase at Grand Central Terminal during Chanel’s Resort 2007 show in New York.
Karl Lagerfeld descends the staircase at Grand Central Terminal during Chanel’s Resort 2007 show in New York.
Photo: Getty Images
Inside the Zaha Hadid–designed Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, erected in Central Park in 2008.
Inside the Zaha Hadid–designed Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion, erected in Central Park in 2008.
Photo: Getty Images
The atmosphere in a staging of Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2015 Paris-Salzburg collection at the Park Avenue Armory.
The atmosphere in a staging of Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2015 Paris-Salzburg collection at the Park Avenue Armory.
Photo: Getty Images

Chanel is coming back to New York. On December 4, the historic French maison will hold its annual Métiers d’Art show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Aligned with Pre-Fall deliveries, the Métiers d’Art collection celebrates the craftspeople of Chanel and its partners. Recent collections have been staged in Hamburg, Germany; Rome; and Paris. This isn’t the first time Chanel has come to New York City: It held its 2005 Paris-New York Métiers d’Art show at its Fifth Avenue store; its Resort 2007 show in the promenade of Grand Central Terminal; and restaged its 2015 Paris-Salzburg Métiers d’Art runway show at the Park Avenue Armory. In 2008, Chanel also erected a retrospective exhibition in Central Park, housed in a Zaha Hadid–designed temporary building.

The decision to come to New York is based in Coco Chanel’s personal history. The designer first came to the United States in 1931 on a trip to meet with Samuel Goldwyn in Los Angeles to discuss designing for film. En route to L.A., she stopped in New York, settling at the Pierre hotel, where a reception was held in her honor. She returned again on her way back to Paris that year, and continued to build her American clientele for the next 30 years through retailers like Neiman Marcus and press coverage in Vogue.

As for the Met, the museum has a long history with fashion, most evident in its annual Costume Institute Gala and exhibition. In 2005, it staged “Chanel,” a retrospective show of Coco Chanel’s groundbreaking designs shown side by side with Karl Lagerfeld’s. And in 2016, Lagerfeld cochaired the Met Gala in celebration of the exhibition “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” in which one of his Chanel haute couture dresses was the piéce de rèsistance. The museum’s participation in the conservation and celebration of fashion considered, the last fashion show staged within its galleries was all the way back in 1982, when Valentino brought its Fall line stateside. All the more reason to pay attention to what will surely be an extraordinary Chanel show in December.

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