Chanel in Manchester

I have so many questions

Was thinking about the big Chanel takeover of the streets in Manchester’s Northern Quarter this week, which has drawn celebrities and press attention to the city in an unprecedented way. Previous locations for the annual event have included Paris, Rome, and Dakar; the brand have chosen Manchester as the stage for their 2023/24 Métiers d’art show. Chanel’s explanation for being in Manchester? The city is “one of the most effervescent cities of pop culture and an avant-garde one, whose bands, spanning all genres, have changed the history of music”.

Chanel have brought excitement and sparkle to a very rainy melancholic midwinter city, attracting some big names in fashion and assorted celebrities (some of whose names mean something to me), and - according to numerous Manchester cheerleaders – sold out all the hotel rooms in the city (although a quick search on Thursday I found half a dozen hotels in the city centre still with rooms available, albeit quoting prices at least twice usual room rates).

In a city where multiple businesses are praying they make it through until the end of January, hotels being full is trumpeted as good news for the local economy. (Almost) selling-out every £500 hotel room in Manchester is certainly quite a thing, and a big boost for the likes of the Singapore-based real estate investment trust CDL Hospitality which owns the Lowry Hotel. But whether the trickle down to the staff on low wages is perceptible and somehow permanent remains to be seen.

The centrepiece to the Chanel proceedings was a fashion show last night (Thursday) along a specially constructed catwalk under a canopy along Thomas St in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. The event had a few other components including an after-party at the Grade-II listed Victoria Baths on Hathersage Rd, where Primal Scream played live. Also at the Baths, there’s a somewhat under-advertised exhibition over several days, in association with Factory International, featuring photography, music, poetry, design.

Circulated from the beginning of the week, Chanel ambassador and film maker Sofia Coppola made a very short but very high tempo teaser film capturing “the vibrant rhythm that reflects the creative energy of the city”

The key invitees to the Chanel events received a Peter Saville-designed invitation to the show, along with a cashmere scarf. There was also a vinyl record in the bag - cover art again designed by Mr. Saville - featuring ‘Big New Prinz’, and a track by the amazing Afrodeutsche, along others. The swag bag also included tickets to see Manchester United at home to Chelsea.

This week, spot the celebrity has eclipsed football as the city’s favourite sport. One local website excitedly announced breaking news on Wednesday night “Kim Kardashian has been spotted at Old Trafford ahead of the Chanel show in Manchester” although it turned out to be a false alarm. On Wednesday Kristen Stewart was at Salford Lad’s Club, while Thursday brought word that Hugh Grant was seen wandering around near Fopp (headline writers resisted “Fop spotted near Fopp”).

We’ve also heard that Kate Moss was supposedly seen shopping at Aldi in Ancoats. Some background to Aldi in Ancoats was left undisclosed in the media, however; it’s been known for the last six or seven year as “Gay Aldi” owing to the preponderance of spicy gay men congregating there - many of them wearing shorts after a session in the gym nearby. It’s said to be rivalling Gay Sainsbury’s (Regent Rd) which has long been the most celebrated supermarket in Manchester’s extensive cruising scene.

Businesses on Thomas St that have had to close while the catwalk and canopy have been built and operated have been recompensed; with one bar reportedly receiving £47,000 to close for a few weeks but details aren’t readily available as Chanel insisted on business owners signing NDAs. Other businesses proximate to the activity that have had their trade disrupted haven’t been sent cheques, however.

Local websites and the city’s establishment voices have been universally positive and enthusiastic. As well as the joys of a glittery occasion, it seems flattering that Chanel are here. Some journalists have made a link to this year’s opening of Aviva Studios, and the announcement the other week that the English National Opera are relocating to Manchester (although, let’s be honest, ENO were bullied into this decision).

Other phenomena have been mentioned alongside Chanel’s presence in Manchester as evidence of some kind of cultural resurgence. I’ve also read online that the arrival of the Chanel show “adds yet another layer to Manchester’s burgeoning luxury scene”, coming as it does after the opening of a branch of the exclusive members-only club Soho House, the arrival of a glam restaurant called Sexy Fish, and news that W Hotels has signed a deal to operate a five star hotel at Gary Neville's St Michael's development from 2027. Online this has all been heralded as good news for “visitors and high-net-worth residents alike”.

I know Manchester has, or has had, a deep house scene, a dirty burger scene, a queer art scene etc etc; I’m not really au fait with the city’s luxury scene. It isn’t my thing at all, but so long as they pay their fair share of taxes, I’m not denying treats for high-net-worth individuals. And any shift in corporate and cultural power away from London has got to be welcome.

I’m not some puritan grouch wedded to calling out anyone who likes a bit of sparkly distraction in their lives. I’m just observing these phenomena and trying to make sense of them.

‘Blue Monday’ is the soundtrack to Coppola’s short film and the closing credits include a Chanel logo in, yes, naturally – black and yellow stripes. The history of the music in the city has been central to the marketing of the Chanel takeover. This hasn’t been universally welcomed in a city split between people who would be happy going out every week to Haçienda-themed nights, and people who would like black and yellow stripes banned from all marketing material involving Manchester, either because it’s become very boring and unimaginative, or because the appropriation of the Haçienda’s cool by everyone including estate agents desperate to sell apartments in Ancoats, is extremely cringey.

For me, the cultural and political underground is where the great ideas are to be found. In the under-capitalised grassroots. But almost by definition this is all out of sight. It’s a bit much to expect the team from Chanel to take the time or the risks to discover and celebrate Manchester’s current talents. Just as it’s a bit much, I guess, to expect Chanel and Sexy Fish to fix our economy.

Either way, it’s sad that Manchester in 2023 is giving off such a retro vibe. I remember what Grace Jones said about Paris in the 20th century; “It’s where the new happened”. It would be great if that could be a strapline for Manchester in the 21st century, but despite all the current activity in the city, retromania holds sway, and perceptions out in the wider world remain partial and stale. How can the tide be turned?

Fortunately, smiley t-shirts and/or Liam Gallagher parkas didn’t feature at the catwalk on Thomas St on Thursday which, instead, oddly, seemed to be celebrating a look a Tory wife might adopt when meeting a distant cousin in a country pub. Virginie Viard has been the creative director of Chanel since 2019; according to  Chanel's president Bruno Pavlosky, Viard is “very motivated by England. She loves tweed”. 

It intrigues me that the city can so enthusiastically welcome an event like this, conceived by a fashion brand with an estimated worth of $53 billion founded by a Nazi sympathiser, taking over a city so scarred by social deprivation, home to communities suffering a cost of living crisis created by government policies and corporate profiteering, and a city with such poor air quality it’s the asthma capital of Britain.

We’re entitled to scratch our heads at the general state of Manchester in 2023. This is a weird one; property building is booming, but so is homelessness. Out of all cities in the UK, Manchester currently has the highest number of households assessed as homeless. But, at the same time, according to expert advice, if you’re looking to invest in property “Manchester’s buy-to-let market is truly thriving, promising lucrative returns for savvy investors”.  

How this can happen, and how it’s come about in the city is at the heart of a forthcoming book The Rentier City by Isaac Rose (review to follow in the new year). Council targets for social housing are fading into the distance; affordable housing quotas imposed on private developers are seldom enforced; and the majority of new builds - including the ever-emerging glorious towers along tram routes into the city are following a build-to-rent model. 20% of Manchester households are living in private rented accommodation, resulting in a life of deep insecurity and the potential to fall prey to rent increases far beyond inflation, let alone real wages.

So much is swept under the red carpet. You can be assured of one thing that Manchester always does well – pumping out a continual flow of civic boosterism. What Engels described as “lavish self-praise from the bourgeoisie”.

A big hello at this stage to the long established homeless charity Lifeshare who, on Thursday, launched a campaign fronted by Maxine Peake, with a strapline declaring ‘Clothes Are Not a Luxury For Some’. Lifeshare report a huge demand for clothes.  Maxine Peake said of the initiative: “The winter months which are particularly difficult for those that can’t afford to buy clothes – let alone high fashion”. Clothing collections will be taking place at Lifeshare’s office in the Northern Quarter on 12th December. More info here; https://www.lifeshare.org.uk/collection/

Before I call a halt to trying to tease out the tensions between glamorous high fashion and social deprivation, I’d like to share this stunning photo of the French singer Francoise Hardy taken on May 15th 1968 in Paris; she’s is wearing a gold, diamond-studded Paco Rabanne mini-skirt valued at $10.4 million at the opening of a diamond exhibition.

May 1968 Paris was also in the middle of what the French call les événements – students setting up barricades and battling police on the streets of the Latin Quarter, occupying buildings, calling for revolution; and joined, at least for a time, by factory workers. Just two days before this photo was taken, a million demonstrators - students and workers - marched in unity against poverty, a failed education system, unemployment, and police repression. On the very day of this photo, big Renault factories round France were being occupied, and students forcibly took over the Odeon National Theatre to hold a huge meeting there, inspired by Marx, Coca Cola, and the writings of the Situationists, demanding the complete overhaul of western society – whilst planting a red and black flag on the dome of the building.

Paris, May 15th 1968; high end fashion and mind-boggling amounts of money, and political struggle and desperate social unrest, just a few streets apart. These sorts of contradictions are, it seems, inextricably bound up with how we experience cities. Yet we tolerate them

The vexations of social dysfunction in the humdrum everyday; do they exacerbate a human need to escape into fantasy? If I was in Paris in May 1968 would I have been tempted to party with Francoise Hardy? Would I have left the barricades and headed off to meet her if she’d sent me a text and invited me to hang out with her that evening?

Issues raised by les événements are still unresolved – how could they be, given that far from experiencing the complete overhaul of western society, we’ve seen the power of capitalism, materialism, and conformity more deeply entrenched than ever.

In my short format book ‘All You Need is Dynamite’ I discuss the Angry Brigade – a cell of urban revolutionaries active in the very early 1970s, some of whom lived in a shared house in Moss Side for while. They were inspired by Paris in May 1968 and had devoured Situationist texts (especially The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem) and were struck by several of the ideas put forward in them, including that commodity fetishism has infiltrated and distorted everyday life.

In May 1971, the Angry Brigade attempted to blow up the fashion boutique Biba, explaining in a communique “Life is so boring there is nothing to do except spend all our wages on the latest skirt or shirt. Brothers and Sisters, what are your real desires?”

Tony Wilson was at Cambridge University just a year or two behind John Barker of the Angry Brigade (probable author of the post-Biba communique). Tony also read works of Situationist theory. In one Factory release by Royal Family & the Poor extracts from Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life are read out over a pulsing blurry electronic noise. In 1982, these words by Ivan Chtcheglov - a forerunner of the Situationists - inspired the naming of a nightclub; “You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist. The hacienda must be built."

Last Sunday morning, after one of the coldest nights of the year, a man was found dead in a doorway on Bloom St. His name was Marc Renshaw.

Less than two miles from the temporary catwalk on Thomas St you’ll find schools where up to 75% of pupils are from households in absolute poverty.

Many of us know more about celebrities than we do about our neighbours.

I still have so many questions.