Chanel's New High Jewellery Collection

Chanel’s new high jewellery collection recalls a love affair that inspired the life and work of the young Coco Chanel. Pin Lee reports

- Pin Lee

Le Paris Russe de Chanel is a high jewelry ode to a chapter in Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life during which Russia inspired her, although never in her life did she set foot in the country. A notable mention goes to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, with whom Coco had an intense but short-lived affair with in 1921, and subsequently fell in love with all things Russian. The romance was well-documented because the dashing duke had a chequered past and was said to have been quite a ladies’ man. Having fled to Paris when the Russian Revolution broke out, Pavlovich and many others from the Imperial Court including aristocrats, artists, musicians, and dancers congregated in arrondissements that became known as Le Paris Russe, or the Russian Paris.

The handsome duke embodied all the splendor of Imperial Russia for Coco; that he was penniless was immaterial. Through him, she soon formed close friendships with a number of newly stateless exiles from the former empire. She went on to have a scandalous affair with composer Igor Stravinsky, and design costumes for dancers of the Ballets Russes at the behest of its founder, Sergei Diaghilev. Coco was deeply impressed by the country and its people. “The Russians fascinate me,” she remarked. “It’s the Russians who have taught women that it’s not dishonorable to work.’’