Chanel Reveals the Making of Its $10,000 Traditional Flap Purse

VERNEUIL-EN-HALATTE, France — Chanel is lifting the lid on the making of its $10,000 traditional flap purse.

For the primary time, the French luxurious home has opened the doorways to one in every of its leather-based items factories as a part of its ongoing push to advertise its pillar fashion. The transfer comes on the heels of final yr’s high-profile promoting marketing campaign for the 11.12 purse, starring Brad Pitt and Penélope Cruz.

Bruno Pavlovsky, president of style and president of Chanel SAS, mentioned that whereas the advert blitz helped to burnish the aura of the timeless bag, it coincided with a pointy drop in luxurious spending, notably in China, and rising pushback in opposition to a sequence of worth will increase which have positioned Chanel in the identical bracket as rival Hermès.

“This context has led us to progressively open up and clarify the scenario,” he informed WWD. 

“We provide excessive value-added merchandise that require distinctive know-how and supplies, in addition to intensive coaching with passionate groups,” he added. “If we don’t present why it’s costly, folks can’t know.”

No matter market fluctuations, the quilted purse is intrinsic to the home’s mystique, sustaining its draw throughout generations. “At Chanel, there may be No.5 and there may be the enduring bag,” mentioned Pavlovsky. “These are the 2 drivers of the model.”

In contrast to Hermès, which has established a community of straight owned leather-based items workshops throughout France, Chanel has traditionally labored with a bunch of producers in France and Italy that collectively make use of a number of thousand folks.

Although most of its suppliers additionally work with different manufacturers, Chanel has partnered with a lot of them for many years and supported them at important junctures — throughout the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, or when the unique house owners retire and hand over the administration reins.

Usually, that assist has come within the type of discreet investments. Amongst its most up-to-date acquisitions are stakes in two Italian corporations: costume jewellery and metallic equipment maker Leo France and shoe producer Gray Mer.

A French Specialty

These days, Chanel produces two-thirds of its baggage with factories that it controls, and one third with suppliers that stay unbiased, Pavlovsky specified.

“At Chanel, now we have all the time favored a steadiness between the groups and factories that we management and those who we don’t management. I pay explicit consideration to these we don’t management, as a result of they’re those that preserve our toes on the bottom,” he mentioned. “It’s what permits us to remain linked to the market.”

Its signature purse is made completely in France. Les Ateliers de Verneuil-en-Halatte, or AVH, is one in every of its key manufacturing websites, as a result of its location an hour and a half’s drive from central Paris. Based mostly within the Oise division since 1990, the manufacturing unit moved into its present premises in 2021.

On a current go to to the brilliant and ethereal leather-based items workshop on the sting of the Halatte forest, guests have been walked via the making of the bag, which includes some 180 steps.

The 270,000-square-foot manufacturing unit was constructed in line with exacting environmental requirements and produces a part of its vitality because of photo voltaic panels, mentioned Célia Barani, managing director of AVH. It’s house to 470 folks, together with 300 artisans who work in north-facing workshops on the second ground to ensure one of the best gentle.

Within the atrium that homes the communal eating space, a big display screen broadcasts footage of the model’s newest runway show on the Grand Palais. On present days, all of the artisans collect there to see which of their baggage made the minimize, Barani mentioned.

The workshop makes a speciality of producing the 11.12, a reinterpretation of the two.55 bag launched by founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in 1955. It crested in recognition below the home’s late artistic director Karl Lagerfeld after he took over within the ’80s.

“Since then, it hasn’t modified. Its proportions stay the identical, and the manufacturing methods are an identical,” Barani mentioned.

Chanel likes to name it a “couturière” bag as a result of it’s sewn and turned inside out like a jacket, and comes not simply in leather-based — together with the form of ultrasoft lambskin utilized by glovemakers — but additionally seasonal supplies together with tweed, denim, sheepskin and embroidered designs created by the specialist workshops at its craftsmanship hub Le19M.

The place Generations Meet

In contrast to Hermès baggage, that are produced by a single artisan, Chanel’s traditional bag requires the enter of some 30 folks, from mannequin makers to preparers, cutters and assemblers, who work in clusters of 4.

“To completely practice one in every of our leather-based items artisans takes round 4 to 5 years,” Barani defined, noting that staff typically start by specializing in a single step.

“The goal is for every artisan to finally have the ability to make their bag from A to Z, nevertheless it’s very gradual. Our precedence is to protect this know-how via a system of apprenticeship, whereby skilled artisans work hand-in-hand with more moderen recruits in order that, over time, they discover ways to grasp all these abilities,” she added.

The ability has an on-site coaching college, which welcomes teams of 10 apprentices at a time and likewise offers on-the-job coaching for current workers, who’re 82 p.c feminine and vary in age from 18 to 65.

They embody veterans like Sylvie, who’s been making Chanel purses for 38 years and is in control of braiding their distinctive leather-based and metallic chain straps.

Confronted with a power scarcity of expert staff throughout the luxurious sector, Chanel welcomes each newcomers to the job market and other people searching for to vary careers, with new hires together with former florists and carpenters, in line with Barani.

The group has employed 1,200 folks below age 30 per yr since 2022 as a part of the French authorities’s “One youth, one answer” program. At AVH, it brings on between 40 and 50 artisans a yr, primarily to switch those that have reached retirement age, mentioned Barani. Because of this, a 3rd of the workforce there may be below age 30.

Chanel has needed to regulate to the expectations of those youthful staff, who demand larger salaries and extra versatile working hours, Pavlovsky mentioned. “COVID-19 marked an actual turning level by way of folks’s expectations,” he mentioned. “Lots of people determined to vary lives and it’s been exhausting for us to coach folks to switch them.”

Among the many more moderen recruits is Jennifer, who was once within the military and now stamps the gold Chanel emblem inside the baggage.

The Verneuil-en-Halatte web site is house to a supplies storage unit with greater than 900 leather-based and cloth references and 1,100 sorts of {hardware} and thread. “All our supplies come from provide chains which can be traceable, sustainable and accountable. We work with tanneries in France, Italy and Spain that belong to our ecosystem,” Barani mentioned.

Every bag requires 20 items of leather-based, with offcuts recycled to make salpa, a bonded leather-based fiber materials used for prototypes, or heels for the model’s slingback sneakers.

There’s a check laboratory the place samples of supplies and completed baggage are put via their paces, and a restore workshop the place a weathered brown bag awaited rescue, its flap chewed by a canine.

A Hotline to Trend

However what actually units the ability aside is its improvement and design workshop, which is in fixed dialogue with the artistic groups on the design studio on Rue Cambon in Paris and the specialty workshops at Le19M, together with embroiderer and tweed-maker Lesage; embroidery workshop Atelier Montex, and Lemarié, in control of flowers and feathers.

In tandem with the ready-to-wear schedule, AVH turns round eight collections a yr. A workforce of 40 folks translate the artistic temporary, which may come within the form of a sketch, an inspiration picture or a bag from Chanel’s sprawling archives.

“We’re actually a style leather-based items firm,” mentioned Barani. “Holding tempo with these ready-to-wear collections means you’re all the time working with new fashions and supplies. Because of this, you’re all the time studying. You by no means get bored.”

A living proof is the brand new 25 bag, which can be produced on web site. Launched in March, it’s backed by a worldwide marketing campaign that includes Dua Lipa and Blackpink’s Jennie Kim, nicknamed “Human Chanel” by her followers.

The medium-sized model in black grained calfskin retails for $6,400, broadly in the identical vary because the model’s earlier launch, the 22, which sells for $5,800. 

In the meantime, the worth of a Chanel Medium Traditional bag has gone from $5,800 in 2019 to $10,800 in 2025, a rise of 86 p.c, in line with New York-based reseller Madison Avenue Couture, which touts it as an funding that outperforms gold and the inventory market.

For the previous few years, Chanel has elevated its costs in March and September to replicate inflation in uncooked supplies and harmonize its costs between completely different areas.

Pavlovsky mentioned the worth in euros is raised annually. “We’re deciding how a lot it is going to be for 2025 and when the worth enhance will take impact, after which you will have the adjustment linked to the greenback trade fee,” he mentioned. “We don’t transfer costs on a regular basis. We monitor currencies and typically, we time it to the launch of collections.”

Nonetheless, he reiterated that Chanel has no intention of fixing its pricing coverage.

Fairly, it can proceed to supply extra perception into its fabrication course of, one thing he believes will develop into more and more vital because the European Union implements a brand new regulation requiring practically all merchandise bought within the zone to characteristic a digital product passport.

This initiative, a part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Merchandise Regulation, goals to boost transparency by offering complete details about every product’s origin, supplies, environmental affect and disposal suggestions.

“The day the digital passport is applied, it can embody obligatory info to calculate the carbon affect of every product, however it can most likely additionally characteristic extra marketing-oriented details about what makes the product particular,” Pavlovsky defined.

“The concept shouldn’t be to do that for hundreds of merchandise, however maybe to progressively enrich these digital passports for sure merchandise with info that highlights the know-how that goes into them,” he added. “What you’re seeing immediately is a glimpse of the longer term.”