A central theme of the exhibition is the invention of a “Riviera style” and how it came to represent a new femininity. NMNM-Andrea Rossetti/Héctor Chico

There’s no dimming the cachet around Chanel: as recently as December 2024, the brand generated feverishness when Matthieu Blazy was announced as Karl Lagerfeld’s heir. The exhibition “Les Années folles de Coco Chanel” (“Coco Chanel’s Roaring Twenties”) at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco through October 5 explores the OG designer’s work within the specific context of the Riviera in the 1920s and, in the process, reaffirms that the modern feverishness around her brand has been palpable since its debut.

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The villa-turned-museum is perched on a cliffside with views of the sea. Inside, there are thirty Chanel garments and accessories ranging from a white silk taffeta pleated daytime dress to a black wide-brimmed braided Italian straw hat with silk ribbon, all designed by Gabrielle herself. These are paired with works by artists (among them Pablo Picasso and Natalia Gontcharova) as well as photographers (including Man Ray and Madame D’Ora). Painter Kees Van Dongen was such a fangirl of the brand’s silhouettes that he allegedly said he was “only able to paint women in Chanel dresses.” His oil on canvas portrait of the designer from 1920 greets viewers at the top of the first stairway: she’s in a figure-hugging sky blue suit and white blouse layered with a chunky beaded necklace. Front-facing and larger-than-life, she has her hands on her hips, her hat’s cocked to the right and she dominates over a background of scampering horses.

Curator Celia Bernasconi’s aim was, as per her essay “Forming a Body,” to recreate “the experimental spirit and transdisciplinary relationships that were the order of the day.” Creative hybridity and a collaborative orbit are more longstanding than we imagine. Case in point: in 1920, after Chanel met impresario

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