CHANEL – “FLYING CLOUD” NEW HIGH JEWELRY COLLECTION

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Flying Cloud: a light breeze, a fleeting cloud whose shadow glides over the surface of the water…

What better image could there be of Gabrielle Chanel’s fierce quest for freedom throughout her life? To free the body from all shackles, desire from false pretenses, social relations from the shackles of convention, life from its ordinary, remaining as if in suspension, at the limit of air and water, between sky and sea…

Gabrielle Chanel was a woman of contrasts: the granitic rigor of the landscapes of her childhood, the austere purity of the Aubazine abbey, the harshness of the Scottish moors, all contrast with the places so lazily referred to as “resorts”. Borderline places, steps between land and water, each of which seems linked to an encounter, a singular figure: Deauville and the Basque Coast to Boy Capel, Venice to Diaghilev and the Serts, the Riviera to the Duke of Westminster, Cocteau and Picasso… Each giving a particular color, a particular tone to the different moments, the successive times of his existence. It’s as if she had to move from one element, in its purest form, to its opposite: from the extreme hardness of a mineral landscape to the suppleness, to the enveloping, fluid softness of water crossed by the sun.
Flying Cloud: this is also, of course, the name of the yacht owned by “Bendor”, Hugh Grosvenor, second Duke of Westminster, one of the men who undoubtedly counted most in the designer’s life…

Flying Cloud: a four-masted ship with a black hull and white wooden deck that was not only a place for vacations and sometimes stormy romances, but also and above all the emblem of a way of life where the most unheard-of luxury – no less than forty crewmen were needed to run the boat – was only the condition for the most extreme simplicity, sunny lunches, charades and conversations between friends. Luxury,” said Gabrielle Chanel, “is a necessity that begins where necessity ends.

There’s nothing that suits his aesthetics better than a living environment where everything is reduced to its essentials, where the perfection of every form emerges from a proven function: the perfect roundness of a buoy, the sharp cut of a very white sail, the subtle intricacy of rope knots whose design, both supple and strong, recalls that of arabesque and interlacing. Nothing better suited his vision of fashion than these striped jersey sailboats, wide, supple pants, black, slightly loose ties, emblematic berets and even the regulation white watch straps of English sailors, exalted by coppery skins. They offered a masculine counterpoint to the brilliance of the pearls she made one of her fetishes, and whose contrast with her sun-browned skin she loved in summer – a sun she had been among the first to expose herself to, back in the twenties. “A very white earring on the lobe of a very tanned ear enchants me”, she told Paul Morand.

There’s not a color register specific to life at sea that doesn’t seem predestined for it: a restricted, restrained range, at once severe and sensual, where black, blue and maritime white, and the muted, warm glow of polished brass, are lifted from the dark, cool bed of the sea.

In this part of the Mediterranean coast, from the red rocks of the Estérel to the lemon groves of Menton, where the sea bathes the foot of the mountains, the air never ceases to circulate, caught up in the perpetual movement of ebb and flow that cleanses the sky of all impurities and results in “that magnificent fullness of light” of which Nietzsche spoke, that “atmospheric dryness” in which he saw a “remedy for all the words of the soul”. Of the soul, that is to say first of all of the body. A lively, dry, nervous body, af born of its exposure to the elements, the salty air, the sun’s burnish, the caresses of the foam, the light body that Gabrielle Chanel dreamed of and cultivated.

As a tribute to these sunny moments in Mademoiselle’s life, and to the rhythm of life on a cruise, CHANEL Joaillerie presents the Flying Cloud Haute Joaillerie collection, offering 2 chapters.

The former plays with and sublimates the simplest, most necessary elements of life on board: from buoys in white gold, lapis lazuli and cultured pearls for the Precious Float line; gold ropes and diamonds for Sparkling Lines; mooring anchors in white gold, pearls and sapphires for Yachting Day; sails, compasses and tattoos, in white or yellow gold, sapphires and diamonds for Sailor Tatoo…. And let’s not forget the infinite nuances of the sea, from the transparency of the clear waters of Turquoise Waters in white gold, sapphires and diamonds, to the deep, dark blue of the high seas in Deep Blue in sapphires, white gold and diamonds.

The second chapter presents a series of variations on the summer wardrobe, the freedom of movement, and the freedom of the garment floating around the body: alternating bands of intense blue sapphires, white gold, cultured pearls or yellow and white diamonds for the Summer Cruise line; sailor uniform braids for Golden Braid. As on sailors’ jackets, large yellow or white gold buttons adorn the Sailor Suit set, to which are added a bracelet and ring in the form of ropes knotted in gold and diamonds for Sunny Rope, as well as the sautoirs, breastplates and airy bracelets in white gold, sapphires and diamonds of the Sapphire Stripes series.
The high points of this collection, dedicated to the golden light of the sun and the freshness of the Mediterranean breeze, are two unique pieces of virtuoso goldsmithing: a plastron necklace, a braid of white gold, sapphires and cultured pearls in the Azurean Braid line, and a supple rope of white gold and diamonds in the Endless Knot line.
…A tribute to the unmistakable nuances of the sea, to the transparency of clear waters…

LA PAUSA Roquebrune – cap martin
Built in 1929 in the hills above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, La Pausa is the only house entirely designed and decorated by Gabrielle Chanel. It’s a place she designed in her own image, to spend long moments in the company of her friends. As such, it is an essential witness to her history, her taste, and her art of living, which joined the CHANEL Heritage in September 2015.

A DISCREET REFUGE
In the 1920s, Chanel was a frequent visitor to the Côte d’Azur, which had become a fashionable resort for the Parisian and British elite, who were discovering the benefits of the sea and sun. After cruising the coast on the Duke of Westminster’s yachts, in particular the Flying Cloud, she felt the urge to settle down and build a house. She found the perfect plot of land in the hills above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, halfway between Monte-Carlo and Menton, and very close to Italy. She bought the La Pausa site on September 30, 1928. Four hectares in size, it offers a discreet site with a splendid view of the sea and surrounding villages.
A PERSONAL ARCHITECTURE
Chanel entrusted the construction to a young Belgian architect living in the region, Robert Streitz, whom she asked to implement her ideas. To this end, she sent him to discover the Aubazine abbey, where she had spent part of her childhood and whose imprint on La Pausa is profound: a groin-vaulted narthex entrance, a large basilica hall, a staircase banister that reverses the distinctive design of the staircase leading from the collegiate church to the orphanage in Aubazine, a three-sided cloistered patio, also groin-vaulted, and a garden gate reminiscent of a monastic fence. To this, Chanel adds a few references to its own symbolic universe, starting with the five windows that illuminate the great hall and inscribe its lucky number right on the façade.
A SIMPLE DECOR
The architecture tends towards the simplicity, if not the rusticity, the austerity of certain Provencal residences. The main building, the outbuildings – comprising a janitor’s cottage, a garage with servants’ bedrooms and a small guest house – and the garden were all built in a single year. The interior follows the same rules of monastic simplicity, which corresponds both to an essential aspect of Chanel’s taste and to a sense of pared-down modernist aesthetic. The walls are white, the floor is made of large, irregular tiles, and the furniture is medieval in inspiration.
OLIVE TREES AND LAVENDER
She created an open garden, laid out in large masses; she planted dozens of century-old olive trees at great expense, and matched them with the delicately scented plants and vegetation of the region: clumps of orange trees and terraces of lavender that surround and perfume the residence.
A PLACE OF FRIENDSHIP
La Pausa is not designed for solitary retreats: with its seven bedrooms, large reception areas, piano and tennis court, it is designed to welcome not what might be considered the “beau monde”, but a veritable circle of friends, in total freedom and relaxation. Guests at La Pausa included Jean Cocteau, Pierre Reverdy, Misia Sert, Paul Morand, Serge Lifar, Etienne de Beaumont, Valentine and François Hugo… Salvador Dalì even stayed to work for long periods, and painted several important canvases there in 1938.
LA PAUSA AFTER MADEMOISELLE CHANEL
In the early ’50s, Gabrielle Chanel abandoned La Pausa. The world had changed, and it was no longer the carefree era that had marked the place. She decided to sell La Pausa to Emery Reves, a Hungarian-born businessman and intellectual, publisher and friend of Winston Churchill, just as she returned to the fashion scene in 1953. The Reves family restored the villa, preserving its spirit. In addition to Churchill, who painted there assiduously every summer, Aristotle Onassis, Maria Callas and Greta Garbo continued to nurture the legend of a magical place, with its discreet, luminous radiance, which it was time to awaken from its long slumber.

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