Chanel certainly knows how to pick up the threads of its own narrative. Be it while hinting at the precious objects once owned by its founder Coco Chanel, or by turning the trade and crafts of couture into watchmaking themes, the brand keeps bringing in design ideas into its watches that don't originally belong there, and with remarkable taste. After featuring Coromandel screens, lions, camellias or buttons, they're now turning a seamstress's tool, and the crafts it belongs to, into a precious matter. The latest member of Mademoiselle Privé, their fine crafts watchmaking collection, is called Pique-Aiguilles. In English: pin-cushion.
This one may look like an oddity. One can't help but feel there's no real interest or nobility in a pin-cushion, which is a little plump bag of beads or seeds of no aesthetic value. Nor would there be in a thimble or sewing tape. These are mundane objects to say the least. Whatever value they really have lies in what they allow, which is creation by the unsung heroes of the dressmaking world: the seemstresses.
Chanel paid an almost literal tribute to the pin cushion, all the way down to the watch's actual size. The yellow gold case has an unusual, wide, domed outline, which is much larger than its black satin strap. At 55 mm, it's far outside the very notion of normality. How will its owners wear it? Over the cuff? Trapped in an elaborate holder and as a pendent? On their bare skin? Or maybe will some of these masterpieces remain in a safe or a vault, which would be a real shame. Because the Pique-Aiguilles are as much watches as they are display cases, exhibition spaces meant to exhibit their dials. There are five of them, each one being edited in a twenty-piece limited series.
These dials harbour another type of metaphor, which is built in Chanel's identity. Each one is a rather a literal tribute to the brand's iconic crafts and flagship products. One is a tweed pantsuit pattern, not yet assembled, on which lies a thimble, a pair of scissors and a tape measurer. Another is a maze of quilted handbags, whose leather is depicted in black mother-of-pearl and whose clasp is a baguette-cut diamond. A third one is dedicated to embroidery and is entirely set with 650 diamonds, in the snow-set fashion. Lace is also part of the collection.
Each time, the type of dial-making craft used to render the couture craft is different, as if the dial maker were echoing the wide array of skills needed in a workshop. Les Cadraniers de Genève have gone the extra mile and added a gold pearl braid to surround all five dials. The hands are just as special; they are shaped like needles. All they need is an eye. And then there are the knitting needles; they just might be the longest hands ever placed in a wristwatch.
As a whole, the Pique-Aiguilles collection feels like a meta-reflection of Chanel's image and its needlework side, of its skills in an artisanal creation sewn inside a timepiece. A transfiguration of fabric and soft materials into more solid, rigid and durable ones such as pearls, gold, enamel and diamonds. As a result, the not-much-to-look-at little ball of fabric holding fast on a seamstress's wrist has been turned into a timepiece that's both madly refined and deeply meaningful.
