♥ Chanel: 31 Rue Cambon

I find it difficult to explain the why and the wherefore of my fascination with Coco Chanel and the brand she created.  When I mull over this fascination I sometimes wonder if Chanel is either simply a monumental marketing triumph or more complicatedly a form of Jungian archetype and part of our collective unconscious.  That is not to detract from the magic the brand creates or to underestimate how much and how enduringly Coco Chanel, in her time, changed the way women dress.  Gone were the restrictive clothes of previous periods and she introduced many style classics: the little black dress, striped Breton tops, long ropes of pearls…

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Coco Chanel had her workrooms above her shop on the Rue Cambon and an apartment on an upper floor (she didn’t actually live there, after she sold her Parisian house she slept at the Ritz just across the road from the shop).  Despite my interest in Chanel and my many visits to Paris, until last year I had never been into Rue Cambon emporium, I found the idea of entering the hallowed portals daunting and it was so much easier to be ‘just browsing’ in a Chanel concession in a department store.

Last October I was in Paris for an extended stay and often walked down the Rue Cambon; one day as I was passing the shop I simply thought why not and walked in – the world didn’t come to and end and no one seemed to care that I was wearing jeans.  The shop is large and the polite, professional and black-clad staff were happy to let me browse.  I bought a lipstick; I got lots of advice from a helpful assistant on which colour best suited my skin tone and my tiny Channel purchase was wrapped with as much ceremony as if I had invested in an expensive suit.

I revisited the shop on subsequent trips to Paris; I am back in the French capital for a few days in November and I wonder will I be drawn back to 31 Rue Cambon…