Washington Winter Show 2017

46 This page is sponsored by Jane and Tucker Battle artist was in South East Asia in the summer of 1968 urges her friend to return because she misses her. This story is—surprisingly—absent from every Chanel monograph. A snapshot of Marion as a young child wearing a uniform fancy dress is captioned “I am a soldier”; in another, taken later, she is costumed in a man’s evening suit with her horse in the background. These were precisely the type of garments that inspired Chanel’s fashion designs. As Jeffie and I explored the objects in her archive (which she had not looked at since her mother’s death) other curatorial narratives emerged. We were intrigued to see a shared palette and stylistic references emerge between garments and paintings. One clear example of this is the abstracted background in Marion’s portrait Chanel on Balcony in Switzerland, 1968 and the dull mauve-pink tones in Chanel’s silk lamé shorts Marion and Coco in Lausanne, c. 1968. Marion and Coco pose together with Coco Chanel—Big Head, painted by Marion in 1967. Photographer unknown. ensemble, worn by Marion, for spring/summer 1969. This theme was developed by London College of Fashion alumni, who work as White Line Projects, in a vimeo which we have in the exhibition. Hands were another theme—both women felt the urge to create with their hands and had the “hands” to handle horses expertly. Also threading through the material was the number five: Chanel No. 5 is the most famous perfume in the world, Jeffie owns and we have exhibited five portraits of Chanel, and the friendship lasted for the final five years of Coco’s life. HOWMARION MET COCO Marion adored working and living on Paris’s artistic and countercultural Left Bank. Most years in the sixties, she spent six months there. From windows of her top floor studio-residence at 126, boulevard Saint-Germain,