Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and Chanel SAS, addresses the reshaping of the storied French house, from its ban on exotic skins to its curious new London headquarters, as well as the rumours that Phoebe Philo will succeed Karl Lagerfeld.
On Monday afternoon, the Parisian fashion house announced it would halt its use of fur, following in the footsteps of luxury peers like Gucci and Burberry. But Chanel went a step further, saying it would stop manufacturing products made from exotic skins like crocodile and stingray.
Then, just a day later, the brand staged a multi-million-dollar fashion show in the famed Egyptian Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There, dozens of top clients joined editors and buyers for designer Karl Lagerfeld’s annual Métiers d’Art spectacle, a high-wattage event that doubles as a tribute to 26 Chanel-owned ateliers that specialise in skills like embroidery, pleating and button-making.
And that was all over the course of just 48 hours. It’s also been quite a year for the Chanel business. Earlier this year, the privately owned house, controlled by the secretive Wertheimer family, established a London-based holding company for its global operations and revealed its worldwide revenue for the first time in its 108-year history. In 2017, global sales hit $9.6 billion, a nearly 12 percent increase from a year earlier.
