CAMILLE BENOIST

” With this project, I wanted to combine the chic, simple style of Paris with the bewitching mystique and exoticism of Venice. It took me back to 1920, to the time of the avant-garde Mademoiselle Gabrielle Chanel, one of Paris’s most iconic figures. Like a true adventurer, I wanted her to travel on board the Simplon Paris-Venice (‘The Orient Express’), dressed in a tweed cape and her many strings of pearls. On arrival in Venice, the fabric is transformed into a sumptuous blend of tweed and guipures (Venetian lace) embellished with harlequin motifs (a reference to the Commedia Del Arte and the Venice Carnival). Her necklaces become Murano pearls.

I created a Rococo silhouette for this project, with clean cuts that set the opulent, profound and inviting atmosphere of Venice against the classic, timelessly refined but cooler ambience of Paris. A cape constructed from tweed and a stiff, ankle-length band of fabric, embellished with a painted and embroidered guipure motif and a diamond-shaped tweed panel, and finally two necklaces of embroidered Murano pearls mixed with real Murano pearls and fragments of Gabrielle Chanel’s necklace.

This piece represents the alliance of two iconic cities. “

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