Inside the Plywood and Lego Chanel Boutique Created by New York Artist Tom Sachs
By Max Berlinger
What do Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Rodrigo, Marge Simpson, and Sofia Coppola all have in common? Of course, they’re all cultural icons—and furthermore, they’ve all been spotted wearing one of Chanel’s tweed skirt suits. As of yesterday, they have another connecting thread: They’re some of the many muses who helped inspire artist Tom Sachs’s heady, humorous new project—an ersatz Chanel store nestled along Centre Street in New York’s SoHo neighborhood.
Sachs worked with fashion historian Colby Mugrabi to curate the show, titled 31 Rue Cambon. Together, they built a simulacrum of the iconic Paris retail location out of humble materials from the outside in. Inside, the wares hanging in the exhibition create a Chanel store complete with dresses that are all made of plywood that has been painted and manipulated to evoke tweed, embroidery, and other highfalutin textiles and ornamentation. Accessories like the iconic flap shoulder bag are there too—plus shoes, jewelry crafted from Legos, and other commonplace ephemera. It is a cheeky celebration and subversion of consumerism, both an homage and a send-up of the ridiculous world of luxury goods.
“I consider everything in here to be a sculpture,” Sachs said, standing outside the “shop” during a preview yesterday. “The clothes—you can’t wear them. They’re sculptures in the spirit of Claes Oldenburg’s The Store from 1961. You know, a hamburger you can’t eat, a TV you can’t watch, and a dress you can’t wear. But there are these beautiful sculptures.”
“I’m thinking about it in the context of contemporary luxury,” Mugrabi added. “Window dressing is such an important part of the luxury experience today. The exterior of the stores is sometimes as important as when you go inside.” (Fun fact: Sachs once worked on store windows at Barneys New York during Simon Doonan’s wildly creative run there.)
