CHANEL · Black & Gold Lesage Tweed Jumper with Kongo Graffiti

— The Egyptian Collection · Métiers d’Art 2019 · Karl Lagerfeld

Hieroglyphs in spray paint, four thousand years late

On 4 December 2018 Chanel ran a show through the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, around the Temple of Dendur — raised on the Nile under Augustus, taken apart stone by stone when the Aswan High Dam came for it, given to the United States in thanks, rebuilt in New York behind a wall of glass. Guests reached it over a moat of papyrus planted for the evening.
For the collection’s writing Chanel commissioned Cyril Kongo, a French graffiti artist, to make a single motif: the double C set among flowers, zig-zags and owls. On this jumper that writing stays at the borders. The neck, the cuffs and the hem are ribbed and inscribed; the tweed between them says nothing at all — which is how a stela is laid out. A plain field, a written edge.

MATERIAL POETRY

• Black Lesage tweed flecked through with gold — the gold is spun into the yarn, not laid on the surface, so it moves with the sleeve
• Ribbed bands in black and gold at the neck, the cuffs and the hem:
  the only flat cloth on the piece, and the only cloth that talks
• Black and gold throughout — scattered through the tweed,
  drawn by hand on the bands

HOUSE CODES

• Cyril Kongo’s motif, drawn by hand: CHANEL spelled out, the double C, a camellia in outline, zig-zags and marks that read as letters
• The camellia reduced to a contour — the House’s flower, tagged rather than embroidered
• A clean V at the neck, no collar, no closure
• Sleeves blown full from the shoulder and gathered into a deep turned cuff
• The body drawn into its hem band, so the jumper sits blouson above the waist

SILHOUETTE

• V-neck, collarless
• Full sleeve, narrowing sharply to the cuff
• Short in the body, gathered at the hem
• Wide ribbed bands at all three openings

The tweed says nothing at all.
Everything is written at the edges.

COLLECTION READING

• The Egyptian Collection wrote its hieroglyphs in spray paint and did not apologise for it
• Kongo’s alphabet is invented, but the owl in it is a real Egyptian letter — the joke is literate
• Among the pharaonic gold and the scarab cuffs, this is the piece you could wear on a Tuesday
• The last Métiers d’Art collection Karl Lagerfeld presented. He took his bow with his godson Hudson Kroenig and died eleven weeks later.

THIS OBJECT

• Size mark 36 FR

• Never worn in the seven years since the show, 4 December 2018

• ⟨The gold yarn lies flat throughout, with no snagging or pulled loops⟩

• ⟨The graffiti unbroken and unrubbed at both cuffs and along the hem⟩

• ⟨The ribbing holds its tension at neck, cuffs and hem⟩