Alice Dellal, Atlanta de Cadenet, Gia Coppola, Lily Collins, Harley Viera Newton, Poppy Delevingne, Alexa Chung, Leigh Lezark and Lily Allen have an average age of 27. They’re our peers – on paper, they could almost be our mates. But there’s a world of difference between us and them, and it boils down to this: they are front row at the Chanel show, wearing head-to-toe Chanel and posing for photos with Karl Lagerfeld. We are in the office, wearing cheap T-shirts, Googling their pictures and wondering how to get an invitation.
Nevertheless, Chanel loves us – and by ‘us’, I mean young people as a species. You could see that from last week’s show, which was styled up to look like the student protests of 1968. You can see it in the accessories that seem to be designed with street style in mind, like last season’s milk-carton handbags and glittering golden sneakers (just crying out to be worn by Rita Ora to the Chiltern Firehouse). And you can see it most clearly in the way Lagerfeld seizes on the newest 20-something pop stars and actresses. One minute they’re doing their first interview on Radio 1; the next, they’re calling him ‘Uncle Karl’ on Instagram, and starring in Chanel campaigns.
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It’s nothing new for a fashion brand to worship youth, but Chanel really does it best of all – and as a result, the young are more obsessed with this designer brand than any other. Type ‘Chanel’ into Tumblr, where 66% of users are under 35, and you’ll be inundated by a constantly updating stream of catwalk shots, street-style snaps, product wish-lists and declarations of eternal devotion (#lovechanel #amazing #genius). As a generation, we’re like an enormous troupe of Chanel cheerleaders.
Natalie Hughes, a 27-year-old freelance writer and illustrator, fell in love with the classic flap bag when she was 16. ‘I started hankering after it. I used to add it to the bottom of my mum's shopping lists, in the hope that she'd cave. She didn't.’
Even as a teenager, way outside of the typical designer-shopping demographic, Natalie felt like the designs were targeted at her. ‘The classic bags, skirt suits and ballet flats will forever be chic, but even the crazier, logo-emblazoned pieces seem to stand the test of time. The ghetto-fabulous tracksuits and crazy denim of the '90s feel relevant now, and pieces like the Lego bag or the hula-hoop bag are like objects of art.’
So since Chanel isn’t exactly Primark, selling the latest must-haves for £2.50, how exactly has it managed to win the youth vote? According to Emma Baxter-Wright, author of The Little Book of Chanel, it’s all down to Lagerfeld. ‘If you look at Coco Chanel’s post-war collections up to the mid-1960s, her clothes became very dull,’ she says. ‘She hated the 1960s swinging London thing and ignored it – and it showed. When King Karl took over in 1983, his remit was to appeal to a new, younger audience, while not alienating the old one.’
He did it with a combination of youthful design and clever PR. ‘He looked in the archives and found the Chanel signature pieces – interlocking Cs, camellias, ropes of pearls, tweed collarless suits and quilted bags – and he injected a huge boost of modernity,’ says Emma. ‘From very early on he was producing advertising campaigns with supermodels like Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista. He brought a new level of media interest to the brand.’ Thirty years later, he’s still bringing it.
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Somehow Lagerfeld, age 81, understands what young people want – and for our generation, he’s become as significant a figurehead than Coco. Jean, an 18-year-old student from the French city of Angers, has been running a Karl Lagerfeld fan page on Facebook since 2011.
‘I love him – he’s an icon,’ he says. ‘I noticed him in an advert when I was 12 years old, and when I found out more about him, I realised that he’s the 20th century’s last living king of fashion. I started the fan page to see if I was the only one, or whether there might be a community of people who love him.’ Jean’s page now has hundreds of Lagerfeld fans, with whom he shares the designer’s latest news.
He’d love to buy into Lagerfeld’s designs himself, but his collection is limited by a teenage budget. ‘I have the four Coca Cola bottles that he designed in 2010 and 2012, and I’ve collected many articles, adverts, magazines and TV interviews featuring Karl. Of course if I were older, and not a student, I would buy every Chanel piece.’
But the irony is that however much young people adore Chanel, most of us just can’t afford it. Save up £3,000 for a small 2.55 bag? I can’t even buy fabric softener this month. So since the under-30s are mostly skint, why does the brand still use its young aesthetic and zeitgeisty it-girls to flirt with us?
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It’s business, explains Emma Baxter-Wright. ‘Chanel makes money on the licensed products – sunglasses, tights, make-up, jewellery and so on – that “ordinary” people can buy into,’ she says. ‘Every bottle of perfume sold is better for their bottom line. For us, those small purchases make us feel that we’ve got reflected glamour, because we own something by the brand.’
She’s right. Though my 2.55 fund will probably never grow beyond £2.55, I do have a few much-loved pieces of Chanel make-up. My pathetically minimal Chanel collection would fit inside Alexa Chung’s smallest quilted handbag and still leave room for her iPhone and cigarettes, but somehow it makes me feel connected to the brand anyway.
And from Lagerfeld’s point of view, our pocket-money purchases and our unwavering loyalty are enough. Young people might not be affluent customers, but with our Facebook pages and our Tumblr accounts, we’re the noisiest cheerleaders in the world.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.