CHANEL · Purple Cashmere Cardigan with Gripoix Jewels

— Paris / London Métiers d’Art 2008 · Karl Lagerfeld

• Collectible · As seen on Sarah Jessica Parker

The borrowed sweater, returned with interest

Gabrielle Chanel’s knitwear was never hers to begin with. She took jersey off men — Boy Capel’s sweaters, the Duke of Westminster’s wardrobe of knits and tweeds — and the cardigan entered the House as a borrowed, masculine, deliberately plain thing.
Paris / London sends it home. The plainest garment in the wardrobe comes back to England encrusted: hand-worked jewels across the neckline and front, poured-glass buttons the size of brooches. The sweater is still a sweater. It is simply wearing everything it owns.

// Size mark 40 FR / Condition: never worn //

MATERIAL POETRY

• Cashmere in a complex greyed purple: charcoal violet in a room, dusky plum at a window, cool slate under grey light
• A cobalt-violet rib frames the neckline, front, cuffs and hem — one bright line drawn around a muted body
• The knit stays fine and supple, so the jewel work sits in the cloth rather than on top of it
• Light in the hand everywhere except where the stones are

HOUSE CODES

• Jewel-encrusted embroidery worked by hand at the neckline and down the front, dark metallics with green, ruby and crystal breaking through
• Gripoix buttons — pâte de verre, the House’s own poured glass — set with crystal and struck with the double C
• The cardigan kept plain in cut, so the ornament has somewhere to sit
• Ribbing used as a frame: Chanel draws the edge before she decorates the middle

SILHOUETTE

• Cardigan cut, buttoned down the front
• Ribbed neckline, cuffs and hem
• Fine gauge, close to the body

From across a room, a quiet purple cardigan.
Closer in, it is covered in stones.

COLLECTION READING

• Paris / London is Chanel with its manners loosened: cashmere and tweed pushed into a sharper, later, more social register
• The English references are not costume, they are inventory — Capel, Westminster, and a wardrobe Gabrielle actually wore
• Lagerfeld’s move is to over-decorate the one garment she took plain
• She borrowed the sweater without asking. He returned it set with stones.

THIS OBJECT

• Size mark 40 FR

• Pristine — kept unworn since the collection release, never cleaned

• Every Gripoix stone present, none chipped or clouded

• Ribbing holds its tension at cuffs and hem; no pilling at the elbows or underarm

• Embroidery threads taut, no slackening at the neckline