Dream Factory

The 2.55, the Boy, the Gabrielle ... At Chanel’s exacting leathergoods workshop in France, the world’s most covetable handbags come to life

- Clare MaClean

NADINE MIGHT JUST BE MY DREAM WOMAN. Tired and hungry, I’ve recently arrived in Paris for fashion week and she’s walking towards me with a tray of croissants. And, I find out, she also has the ability to make every single Chanel handbag designed in the past 34 years. Nadine is retiring today (thus she is doing the rounds of her workplace with buttery goods, in a white chemise adorned with goodbye scribbles). What is she retiring from? The Chanel handbag workshop — otherwise known as the Willy Wonka factory of 2.55s, Boys and, most recently, Gabrielles. It’s where Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld sends a sketch and the rest is magicked into existence.

Actually, it’s a little bit more involved than that. The workshop, a one-hour drive outside Paris, in an understandably nondescript but vast building, houses a workforce of 420 with the collective ability to create a Chanel bag from design drawing to finished product. What does that actually involve? That’s what I’m here to find out. This is the place, after all, that can produce anything from S/S 2013’s famous hula hoop bag (remember that collection? The Chanel handbag workshop certainly does) to a classic alligator flap bag and everything in between.