“I tell myself that all it takes is to wear something on your wrist to have confidence in the future.” – Gabrielle Chanel was one of those spiritual beings that, in one unprecedented creative movement, liberated bodies and an era. The brand that bears her name continued to perpetuate this aim in 2015 with the creation of a new masculine-looking timepiece that was totally dedicated to women: the Boy.Friend. Just for Baselworld 2016, a brand new version of the Chanel Boy.Friend is finally being revealed.
It’s no secret: Chanel liked to mix feminine with masculine. Here’s something else we know all too well about Coco: that her lover’s sensibility accompanied her on her creative path to the point of being one of her primary sources of inspiration. It’s without a doubt this legend that is today being worked with by the Chanel watches workshops, since the new version of the Boy.Friend watch is composed like the meeting point between tweed and steel.
The first, tweed, is fluffy and made of woven wool. It’s also straight out of Scotland, and came about through her relationship with the Duke of Westminster. Thanks to him, she discovered English tweed and made it a cardinal point for the house on the rue Cambon. She would most notably use this fabric to make the piece that marked her triumphant return two years after the fact: the tweed jacket. The second, steel, is icy and recalls a life of hardships – Coco was abandoned as a child and would lose her soulmate later in life – Boy Capel.
In the year 2016, the Boy.Friend and its new tweed release maintain their octagonal shape inspired by the geometry of the Place Vendôme, playing with fabrics to make itself an enrapturing object. A tweed bracelet clasps around the wrist of women to awaken the charm of a certain tomboyish allure. A guilloche black steel dial, ringed with diamonds on one of the new styles, completes this timepiece that is both of its time and timeless, imagined like a hymn to an unconditional love. This latest opus from Chanel’s watchmakers fits somewhere between boyishness and purified aesthetics and could even be worn with the most imitated jacket in the world… in tweed, of course!
Leave a Reply