You’d think that Karl Lagerfeld had enough to contend with, what with producing six Chanel collections a year already (not to mention the work on his own eponymous label and his designs for Fendi), but the designer has just committed to launching the first dedicated Chanel swim and snow collections: Coco Beach and Coco Neige.
Lagerfeld apparently had the idea for creating the two new capsules while on holiday in St Tropez, where he noticed that the Chanel store lacked a strong selection of beachwear, reports WWD. As such, the first Coco Beach range will be due to hit a selection of 26 stores from June, to cater to the summer vacation crowd.
“We have around 30 stores in seaside locations, and during the months of June and July, when towns such as Cannes, Nice, Capri, Barcelona and [cities in] Florida are incredibly busy, the stores are carrying winter collections,” said Chanel president of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky. “These tactical launches are designed to better satisfy the needs of our customers and to find the best way to communicate to them the fact that these items exist.”
Coco Beach will consist of swimsuits, bikinis, cover-ups, denim and espadrilles – everything you could possibly need for an impossibly chic getaway. Of course, Chanel swimwear is nothing new; this is just the first time that a dedicated beach collection has been packaged together as one, to drop during peak summer rush. Perhaps this is as close to see-now, buy-now as Chanel is ever likely to get.
The Coco Neige capsule will feature tech-focused items such as down jackets, salopettes, hoodies and shearling boots and will have a wider distribution, explains WWD, hitting Chanel stores in July and August at the same time as its autumn/winter collection. It will also be available in ski resorts such as Courchevel, where the brand has a temporary store during the winter.
“The idea is to skew more toward technical clothes, because I think both après-ski and sport are largely covered in our existing collections,” said Pavlovsky. “So this is a way of taking the time to work on products that are a little bit more technical and that require more time in terms of development.”
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