And then suddenly he is there: Sébastien Tellier, singer, songwriter and former French ESC participant (18th place in 2008 in Belgrade).

Tellier, with a long beard and thick sunglasses, also takes part in a small tour of the new Chanel building "19M" on the outskirts of Paris, and you don't really know whether he is there simply out of interest or as a kind of advertising figure.

Probably for both reasons: Because the Chanel Métiers d'Art show is about to take place in this building, and of course he is also watching it.

Alfons Kaiser

Responsible editor for the section “Germany and the World” and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin.

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Tellier wears a tweed jacket from Chanel that is not available very often in its dimensions - after all, this is about women's fashion, and these jackets are only worn by a few men like Pharrell Williams or Lars Eidinger.

He has a thick baseball cap on his head, black with gold stitching and gold sprinkles, as if he was about to make an appearance, and that is what he has now, so to speak.

The cap here comes from the house.

Because in the 19M are the Métiers d'Arts from Chanel, i.e. the artisans - and one of them is Maison Michel, the hat maker whose MM logo adorns Tellier's cap. The bracelet made of three-row pearls also looks like Chanel from afar. “But I have to admit,” says Tellier, “I bought it for two euros in a toy store.” Then it's not from Chanel.

Always at the beginning of December, the brand presents the collection dedicated to its artisans.

Karl Lagerfeld had the idea 20 years ago.

The Chanel designer, who often felt underemployed despite being overemployed, had discovered a gap in the course of the fashion shows before Christmas.

That is why this elaborately crafted intermediate collection has always been presented in December since 2002, often abroad, for example in Dallas (2013), Salzburg (2014) or Rome (2015).

The show at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (2017) was also Lagerfeld's last visit to his hometown, and New York (2018) was his last big trip ever.

No delivery bottlenecks

For the 20th collection we are going back to Paris, for reasons of infection protection and because there is now this new building on the outskirts. The name "19M" refers to the 19th district of Paris in which the house is located, also to Coco Chanel's birthday (August 19, 1883) and thus to one of the lucky numbers of the numerologically interested and generally quite superstitious fashion designer. The “M”, on the other hand, should stand for “mains” (hands), “métier” (craft) and “mode”. In any case, the house on the Périphérique city motorway is not lacking in symbolism. The French architect Rudy Ricciotti has clad the five floors around the publicly accessible green inner courtyard with asymmetrical vertical columns - which are intended to remind of the threads that are spun here.

These threads go back a long way. As early as 1954, when Coco Chanel began her second career in Paris after almost a decade in Switzerland, she commissioned Robert Goossens with the development of jewelry for her collections - the goldsmith and silversmith has belonged to the Chanel subsidiary Paraffection since 2005 and is now also based here. In 1957, the shoemaker Massaro developed the famous strap pumps with black caps for Chanel - this craft business has also been part of Paraffection since 2002. Lemarié is also present in the group's new, second headquarters (the first remains on Rue Cambon in the middle of the city): Since 1960, the company, which specializes in feathers and fabric flowers, has been producing the camellia on behalf of Chanel, Mademoiselle's favorite flower - in countless variations, to a wedding dress designed by Lagerfeld in 2005,which consisted only of camellia flowers.

Chanel has bought dozens of such companies, whose founders have died or whose business models have not stood the test of time. When Coco Chanel started fashion more than 100 years ago, there were allegedly more than 800

plumassiers left

in Paris

, i.e. feather dressers who prepare feathers and attach them to clothing or hats - today there are only a handful left, and the largest is Lemarié.

With the workshops, the luxury brand secures its supply chains, which are not plagued by Suez Canal blockades or pandemic difficulties because this company manufactures everything in Europe, especially in France.

"We have to maintain the know-how and train the next generation for the studios," says Chanel managing director Bruno Pavlovsky about the many businesses that he has taken over on behalf of Chanel owners Alain and Gérard Wertheimer.