Now you, too, can feel like you’re chatting with Amanda Harlech inside Coco Chanel’s rue Cambon apartment (…almost). Harlech, Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand woman who describes herself as the designer’s “outside pair of eyes”, talks with fashion writer Susie Lau, model Stella Tennant, author Anne Berest, photographer Margaret Zhang, and more in this new series. Harlech asks each of the Chanel family members, what’s in your purse?
Tennant, who has two Chanel bags in her possession, says her essentials are, “a large diary, an extra pair of earrings, paperwork, a large fur hat (also Chanel), pencils, loose change, art invitations, a lot of lists, receipts, train tickets, keys, lip balm, chewing gum, and a ‘chocolate snack’.” Margaret Zhang, founder of Shine By Three and frequent Chanel collaborator, listed her essentials as a “sturdy camera, a small Chanel coin purse with five different currencies, an essential oil mix, a strange, little bag of crystals…a mix of very practical things like my wallet, powder, a phone charger, and earrings if I need to go from a day to night situation in a hurry.”
The previous two installments of the podcast were aired at Colette in Fall 2017 and at the Mademoiselle Privé exhibition in Hong Kong. Harlech, the owner of only four Chanel bags according to Vogue, told the publication that in her interviews, her goal is to look at a person’s bag not just as an everyday necessity, but as a “marker of identity.”
“For me, it was a process of discovery,” she told Vogue. “What you put in it. What it represents. Whether it’s something that finishes off your outfit, or it’s a starting point. Its symbolic meaning to the wearer. You’re carrying some part, if you like, of your protective environment around with you.”
You can download the podcast episodes here.