At Tom Sachs’s Chanel Boutique, Nothing Is What It Seems
By Alison S. Cohn
Picture it: a Chanel boutique stocked with dreamy bouclé suits, quilted bags, slingbacks, and costume jewelry—except everything is made from plywood, corrugated cardboard, diamanté, and Lego. 31 Rue Cambon, Tom Sachs’ uncanny recreation of the house’s Paris flagship inside his longtime SoHo studio, is just that. It’s the latest in Sachs’s immersive riffs on brands and institutions—what he calls Gesamtkunstwerk—from McDonald’s in Nutsy’s (2003–2005) to NASA in Space Program (2007–present).
The leap to luxury fashion isn’t so great. Sofia Coppola’s recent book, Chanel Haute Couture, which Sachs calls a “punk rock zine of the Chanel archive,” describes couture as placing no limits on materials or construction. “The only things I can think of like that are art and the space program,” Sachs says. The handwork here may be couture-like, but the artifice is deliberate: much as Sachs once remade Mondrian in gaffer’s tape, exposed edges, ridged surfaces, and visibly humble materials give the game away. His insistence on leaving seams, tool marks, and material imperfections visible is central to the project.
Curated by fashion historian Colby Mugrabi, the project—named for the brand’s famous address where Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel kept her apartment—returns to themes Sachs explored in individual works like Tiffany Glock (Model 19) (1995) and Hermès Hand Grenade (1995) that recast deadly objects in upcycled luxury packaging. Chanel’s lawyers were less than amused by Chanel Guillotine (Breakfast Nook) (1998), but when it was shown at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac the following year, Ropac faxed Karl Lagerfeld a photo and received a one-line response: “I love it.” The piece is now in the Centre Pompidou’s permanent collection. Sachs’s current approach to luxury consumption feels less pointed, though the 31 Rue Cambon soundtrack mixes horror-movie scores with Chanel No. 5 advertisements. “You can’t be a critic of consumerism without being an active participant,” Sachs says with a wink.
