Chanel Looks to Build Cultural Capital With Arts Magazine
Chanel's new annual tome, Arts & Culture, was released last month, with the first issue devoted to chronicling the practice and lives of contemporary artists (alongside plenty of promotional Chanel editorial content). It features cultural essays about artists like Tracey Emin, Lu Yang and Tomás Saraceno. There's an interview with photographer Stephen Shore and a report on artificial intelligence art by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. The cover depicts a bust of Chanel that was made by sculptor Jacques Lipchitz in 1921.
'This is Chanel's first arts and culture magazine and you can feel Gabrielle Chanel's legacy in its pages,' said Yana Peel, the brand's president of arts, culture and heritage, using Chanel's birth name. 'She was a voracious reader and was known for surrounding herself with a network of audacious creatives. We're trying to extend that legacy through physical print media.'
'We're seeing a resurgence of interest in independent magazines and in independent bookstores,' Peel added. 'We want to give this moment the amplification that we can through the global stage Chanel has.'
The magazine also unabashedly promotes the Chanel universe. It features figures who have professionally collaborated with the brand, like actress Tilda Swinton and architect Peter Marino, alongside stories that celebrate Chanel's history. Among them is an essay by art historian RoseLee Goldberg titled 'A Life of Performance: Gabrielle Chanel and the Avant-Garde,' and a lengthy visual essay by photographer Roe Ethridge, who captured an array of Chanel's personal belongings, like selections of her jewelry and a handwritten letter to her from Jean Cocteau.
Chanel Looks to Build Cultural Capital With Arts Magazine
Lending an indie feel to things, the publication will be available only at a selection of independent book and magazine stores like Casa Magazines in New York City, Foreign Exchange News in London, Libreria Bocca in Milan and Still Books in Seoul, South Korea.
Chanel's art magazine arrives at a moment when fashion houses have been striving to adapt to changing consumer attitudes about luxury.
'This is something we've been seeing for a while, like when Bottega Veneta took down all their social media channels, to focus on more meaningful world-building marketing tactics,' said Emily Huggard, a professor of fashion communication at Parsons School of Design. 'As people move away from consumption, brands are finding ways to build cultural capital and social capital. Younger generations see something garish about luxury, a tone deafness in luxury's exclusivity, so brands are looking for other ways to connect.'
'This magazine shows how brands want to now link themselves to enduring culture, instead of transient moments,' she added. 'For Chanel, this also allows them another way to tell their historical story, which can get tiring to do.'
Huggard cited another example in Loewe's new monograph dedicated to Jonathan Anderson's tenure at the Spanish luxury house, which includes a foreword by novelist Zadie Smith. There's also Saint Laurent, which announced a film production division in 2023, and Van Cleef & Arpels, which established and (generously) funds a roving contemporary dance festival, Dance Reflections.
Huggard was not surprised that Chanel's magazine was chock-full of Chanel content. She considered whether that prevented it from being taken seriously as an art publication.
'When people read something like this, they can tell there's a brand undertone to it,' she said. 'But it all depends on the writers, how the articles are done, and if it feels culturally tapped in. A magazine like this can be relevant, if they get that synergy right.' —NYT
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