Chanel teases next Métiers d’Art show with dark Juergen Teller video

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Dec 3, 2020

Chanel has teased its next Métiers d’Art show with a dark Juergen Teller video shot at the event’s location, the Château de Chenonceau.

 
Scheduled to be staged in the famed Loire Valley chateau on Thursday evening at 7p.m. CET, this will be the second Métiers d’Art collection designed by Chanel Creative Director Virginie Viard.
 
Due to the current pandemic, the show will be presented behind closed doors in Chenonceau but be made available exclusively to a select audience over the internet.
 
In his video for Chanel, Teller’s video mixes up gothic heads; moss covered statuary; dark green maze walls; irate stone gods and oil paintings of naked muses. Shots of bludgeon-bearing stone chieftains and even a bloody foot of a wooden statue recall Catherine’s frequently violent regency, marked by continual outbreaks of religious wars in 16th-century France.
 
Moreover, the German photographer also captures an image of the double-'C' emblem of Catherine de' Medici, the only woman ever to rule France. Weathered; topped with a crown and seen in worn gold amid two cherubs, Catherine’s emblem is intriguingly like the actual double 'C' of the house of Chanel.

Though the video – driven on by Keep Your Distance by Amon Tobin - also highlights the legendary beauty of the early 16th-century chateau, built like a bridge over the river Cher, a tributary of the Loire. The chateau had been a gift of de' Medici’s husband King Henry II to his mistress Diane de Poitiers. But after the king died in a joust in 1559,  Catherine evicted her and made Chenonceau her own favorite residence.
 
In the past decade, the Métiers d’Art collection, a blend of luxury ready-to-wear and haute couture, has traditionally been the last major show on the international calendar. However, due to Covid, the entire global fashion week schedule has been broken down, and fresh online and videos by designers are now show several times a week.