The House commemorates its British centennial with a 100-guest celebration and dance performance
Chanel recently celebrated its U.K. centenary with an intimate, 100-guest dinner and ballet performance against a backdrop of art and artifacts. The event, held at V&A East Storehouse in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, celebrated the brand’s 100 year anniversary of operating in the United Kingdom, was attended by friends, executives, and ambassadors of the house, including president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS Bruno Pavlovsky, CEO Leena Nair, and U.K. president Elizabeth Anglès d’Auriac.
Guests were entertained by a performance of “Le Train Bleu,” a reimagined one-act ballet dance by members of the English National Ballet. The ballet, based on a scenario by Jean Cocteau and choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska to music by Darius Milhaud for Serge Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes, dates back to 1924, and was originally costumed by Gabrielle Chanel. The costumes, made of lycra printed with knitwear, reflect both the ballet’s light-hearted theme of seaside sporting as well as the house’s design motif of refined, flirtatious glamour. Dancers waltzed in front of a Picasso stage cloth depicting the artist’s “Deux femmes courant sur la plage,” whose conservation Chanel has partnered with the V&A to support. This isn’t the first time in recent years that the house has embraced the ballet: it has a long-standing relationship with the Paris Opera Ballet, serving as a major patron and collaborating on costume design for various productions, such as Hofesh Shechter’s “Red Carpet.”
Founder of the house Gabrielle Chanel had an affinity for the English, and Chanel continues to add to their interconnected legacy. They continue to source tweed and cashmere from the U.K., and in 2023 staged both “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” at the Victoria & Albert Museum and one of its Métiers d’Art collections in Manchester. With this centennial celebration, Chanel honors a century of Anglo-French dialogue that has shaped the house’s identity, and invites for a continuation of its heritage.
