No. 5 Culture Chanel Partie Deux

Image may contain Indoors and Corridor

The house of Chanel has opened their __"No.5 Culture Chanel"__exhibition at __Palais de Tokyo__in Paris to the public. The raw, avant-garde museum space is transformed into a sleek white runway of glass cases, holding more than 200 works of art by Dalí, Picasso, Man Ray, Brancusi, and many more, striking a compelling balance between the past and present.

Chanel's "No.5 Culture Chanel" exhibition at Palais de Tokyo.

The two rows of outlining cases are filled with rare pieces of art, photographs, and archives that will dazzle the mind, helping one further see the unique era of its time, the imagination and the emotional memory of Mademoiselle Gabrielle Coco Chanel, and its cultural mystique of No. 5, within adventurous artistic forms.

All artworks, drawings, photographs, and archival objects are symmetrically incased in clear-lucite boxes, aligned in three separate rows—with the center row being the backbone of the exhibition, as stated by the curator, Jean-Louis Froment, the backbone being inkless books, only perforated outline images, opened to different pages, as if they were the secret codes to unlocking the mystery of Chanel No. 5.

Pieces from the exhibition.

Aside from the intellectual, heady exhibition, there is a screening room where one can see all the past__Chanel No. 5 TV commercials____,which __bring back arresting memories, especially that directed by __Ridley Scott__from circa 1980s, a commercial that encompasses elegance, power, luxury, and sex appeal and which still feels timeless today. A message that still resonates in my mind, “Chanel No. 5. Share the fantasy,” says it all. Explore the fantasy; it is up through June 5.

To celebrate this très Français affair, all of Chanel’s gorgeous ambassadors from the past and present—such as Carole Bouquet (who still looks incroyable!), Audrey Tautou, Vanessa Paradis, Anna Mouglalis, Gaspard Ulliel, and Estella Warren—came to delight all evening guests that flew in from all over the world for this special night on May 3, along with film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Chanel perfumers Jacques Polge and Christopher Sheldrake. Many artists, like Sophie Calle, Yi Zhou, Jean-Michel Othoniel, and Fabrice Hyber were there, along with photographers of No. 5 advertising campaigns Dominique Issermann and Jean-Jacques Bugat.

Herewith, some highlights from a very memorable evening in Paris.