“Fashion passes, style remains” is a famous quote by the historic fashion designer and entrepreneur Coco Chanel. With the exhibition ‘The Chanel Legend’ the Draiflessen Collection tackles the question why Coco Chanel has never yet ceased to arouse such great interest both as a person and as the brand she founded. Her biography and image – created by the fashion designer for herself – have helped to form this legend, but it is above all her creations that not only influenced a brief phase in fashion but actually became a style – a style that has constantly been re-interpreted until today, aslo by her celebrated successor Karl Lagerfeld.

More than 70 creations from the House of Chanel are on show, but the spotlight will also be on the extraordinary number of adaptations and variations of her fashions, reflecting the energy of her trend-setting designs of the ‘little black dress‘ and the ‘Chanel costume’. These are ubiquitous and irrevocably linked to her personality – not least because of the cleverly staged portraits of her by photographers such as Man Ray and Douglas Kirkland.
Curated by Maria Spitz in collaboration with Angela Völker, Vienna, the exhibition is showing around 150 objects from renowned international collections, including the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Applied Arts) Hamburg, the Musée Galliera in Paris, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and also the MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp.
MoMu has loaned three black dresses from the 1960s, a black dress by Hussein Chalayan and a Chanel tailleur donated by H.R.H. Queen Paola from Belgium, all featuring our MoMu Collection.

The exhibition ‘The Chanel Legend’ will run from April 6th until July 7th at the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen and will also be shown in the Gemeentemuseum The Hague in autumn/winter 2013-2014.