The Chanel exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria, Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto, is on until April and I of course headed along to check it out.

NGV have a fantastic pedigree of curating exhibitions from fashion designers and fashion houses, so I was looking forward to the Chanel exhibition. And while it was good, it didn't tip over into great.

Having almost every garment behind glass with nasty light reflections pinging of the glass made it incredibly difficult to see the details.

      

     

And while I certainly appreciate what Chanel did for women's fashion, I have never found her designs particularly inspiring. I love the outré of designers like Schiaparelli over Chanel.

And she didn't use a lot of colour, and you know me and colour!

     

Costume jewellery

Lovely lines in this one

Gathers and a little frou-frou

Hands-down, my favourite piece in the exhibition.

I wanted it so badly.

So much glass. So many mirrors. The reflections. *shudder*

Gardenias

Love this dart treatment

Tiny details

Additionally the exhibition totally, and quite disappointingly, glossed over her Nazi-sympathiser history, the suspicions she was an agent, and her anti-Semitism. And of course rationally I understand why - if they had explored more, the position of hosting the exhibition itself would have been called into question.

But ... c'mon.