THE FABRIC OF CHANEL
During the unveiling of their 2021 novelties, Arnaud Chastaingt, director of CHANEL’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, brings to light the philosophy of the maison, reports justin ng.
Arnaud Chastaingt, director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, brings to light the philosophy of the maison
Paris, the city of love as it is often called, has served as an inexhaustible well of inspiration, cherished by artistes, novelists, designers and filmmakers near and far. What could be the secret to its charm? Perhaps, one may argue, it is the serene cityscape dotted with picture-perfect tenements and tree-lined boulevards as far as the eye can see. Could it also be the food, one wonders, where you are never far from the nearest Michelinstarred brasserie?
“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in histor y, beauty, and in the point of life,” former American president Thomas Jefferson once f amously said. Whatever t he reason that causes Paris to elicit such emotion from Jef ferson – and countless others – seems to have the exact spellbinding ef fect on Arnaud Chastaingt. Such is its magic.
“20 years ago, Paris became my new home and my new life,” the director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio opens up while casting a pensive gaze at the camera.
“It is a city that I found at the time and that I still find today to be very inspiring,” he continues. “I had the feeling at the time that anything was possible.”
Merely 20 years old when he set foot in the French capital, like his contemporaries, Chastaingt harboured big aspirations. He was chasing after a dream in the world of design. Though he confesses that his interest lain in fashion at the time, he found his true calling in watchmaking. The wish he longed for would be granted in 2013 when he was of fered his dream job at Chanel, tasked with leading the maison’s watchmaking endeavours.
That passion which was first ignited by the very city he moved to has been the driving force behind his every step and every decision since, as he strives for Chanel to leave an indelible mark on watchmaking at large. It is no surprise that Chastaingt once more looks to Paris for inspiration.
Home to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and the Notre-Dame, and although not immediately apparent to even culture vultures, Paris is also the cradle of another art form – French electronic music. Beyond the music itself and regardless of the diverse cultural influences have had on the genre, an indispensable element to the theatrics that seem to cajole revellers into a state of trance lies in accompanying visuals. There is not a hint of exaggeration to say that lighting is the soul of electronic music. What has that got to do with Chanel, you wonder? Quite simply, electronic music is the unlikely source of inspiration for Chanel’s 2021 J12 Electro capsule novelties.
The bold, mesmerising lights explicitly orchestrated to match the intensity of the music typical in a dancehall environment are symbolically represented by coloured sapphires in a riot of colour.
“I wanted to create an immersive capsule collection inspired by electronic music culture,” Chastaingt explains. The transversal theme underpinning the collection unambiguously cuts through the lines of what is typically expected of Chanel – that being partial to monochrome.
“Electronic music transcended the frontiers of music and created an aesthetic culture,” he says, adding that the movement gave rise to a “radical new visual universe,” which he further explains as “eccentric, a reflection of nightlife and its atmosphere.”
This collection, he continues, is akin to a party in which Chanel’s classic timepieces are invited to “perform on scene and to borrow from the codes of this universe.”
Amidst timepieces awash with colour, and if you peer past the superficial, there appears to be a conscious effort to pare down on what they can do. Yet apart from coloured sapphires, there is a sense of purity where even a rather universal function like the date has completely been erased.
An aesthete at heart, Chastaingt translates strongly of his inner desire into the timepieces he charts. As someone whose career took flight as a designer as opposed to a traditional watchmaker, he believes timepieces shouldn’t be a smorgasbord of technical brilliance.
While Chanel is as technically capable as any other watch brands, Chastaingt asserts in order to reinterpret fine watchmaking, one has to think beyond the confines of technical aspects.
“I don’t like the term complications. Why complicate things when they can be simple?” Chastaingt muses.
Complications are referred to in the watchmaking lexicon as any feature of a mechanical timepiece beyond the display of hours, minutes and seconds. For example, a chronograph function will fall squarely under this category. To showcase savoir-faire and in the spirit of one-upmanship, watch brands periodically outdo each other in maximising the number of complications that can be fitted into a single watch.
To that point, Chastaingt instead prefers to talk about watchmaking affirmations.
“Chanel has a unique definition of fine watchmaking,” he says, “and fine watchmaking is the ultimate expression of my vision of Chanel watchmaking.”
He reveals that although traditional watchmaking created and appropriated “fine watchmaking” to describe watches with complications, to him, it is simply a term to describe the art of watchmaking. Chanel’s artisans are seen as artists who have mastered the art form and the maison’s timepieces are treated as collaborative artwork, with each artist painstakingly contributing to the final work. A jeweller, an engraver, an embroiderer or an enameller, they are all artists.
So what exactly is the construct of Chanel’s watches?
“Excellence, audacity and exceptionality,” Chastaingt stresses the three perennial criteria present in every Chanel timepiece. “At Chanel, whether it is fine watchmaking or haute couture, the magic operates in the same way.”