11 October 2026
CHANEL has never been short of stories. For more than a century, the House has been documented through biographies, exhibition catalogues, photography books, fashion histories and personal accounts. Gabrielle Chanel’s life alone has inspired countless interpretations, while Karl Lagerfeld’s four decades at the House have generated an equally rich visual record.
Now, a new group of books offers fresh ways to look at CHANEL. The latest titles move beyond a single designer or period. Some examine the House year by year. Others focus on its most recognizable creations, its relationship with Vogue, its distinctive colour palette or the elaborate worlds created for its runway shows. One takes an altogether more personal approach, with Virginie Viard reflecting on more than three decades inside CHANEL.
Together, they reveal something that has always made the House particularly compelling: there is no single way to tell the story of CHANEL.
Style Century: Chanel Year by Year is an illustrated history that follows the House from its beginnings through more than a century of fashion. Rather than concentrating on one particular designer, collection or period, the book moves chronologically through the moments that helped shape CHANEL. Each year is explored through significant clothing, accessories and fragrances, alongside developments in the House’s design direction and its place within the wider fashion landscape.
Young’s approach also places Gabrielle Chanel’s innovations alongside the later chapters of the House’s history, including Karl Lagerfeld’s stewardship and the present day. In that sense, Style Century is less a collection of isolated fashion moments than a timeline of how CHANEL became CHANEL.
A century of fashion, seen one year at a time. Purchase on Amazon
Some CHANEL creations need very little explanation. The quilted handbag. The tweed jacket. The camellia. The two-tone shoe. The pearls. The interlocking CC. Each has become recognizable well beyond the fashion industry.
Masters of Fashion: Chanel brings these signatures together in a large-format visual history of the House. Written and photographed by Victorine Lamothe, the book focuses on iconic looks, accessories, objects and images that have contributed to CHANEL’s visual identity.
The result is a visual vocabulary that can evolve without becoming unrecognizable. Masters of Fashion: Chanel is a celebration of the pieces that made that vocabulary possible.
The objects may change. The codes remain. Purchase on Amazon
Few fashion publications have documented CHANEL as consistently as Vogue and Chanel in Vogue turns that relationship into the subject of a two-volume history. Fashion historian Rebecca C. Tuite examines the period from 1910 to 1982, while photography specialist Susanna Brown covers the years from 1983 to 2025.
The first volume follows Gabrielle Chanel’s emergence and the development of her revolutionary approach to women’s fashion. The second moves into the era of Karl Lagerfeld and continues through Virginie Viard and the House’s more recent history. Together, the books tell two interconnected stories: the history of CHANEL and the history of how CHANEL has been photographed, illustrated and presented to the fashion world.
The book also offers a visual record of some of the most influential photographers to interpret CHANEL, creating a portrait of the House through the eyes of the fashion industry’s most important image-makers. It is, in many ways, CHANEL as seen through another institution that has helped define fashion for more than a century.
Two houses. More than a century of fashion history. One visual conversation. Purchase on Amazon
CHANEL’s relationship with colour is unusually precise. Black, beige, white, gold and red have each played a defining role in the House’s history. They appear in clothing, accessories, beauty, interiors and imagery, often carrying associations that extend far beyond the colour itself.
Jérôme Gautier’s Chanel Colors is the first book devoted specifically to this palette. Its five chapters examine black, beige, white, gold and red through Gabrielle Chanel’s life and creations, while bringing together fashion and beauty photography from some of the most influential photographers of the modern era.
Together, the five colours form a visual language that can be recognized even when the CHANEL name is absent. That is what makes this book particularly interesting. It looks at CHANEL without beginning with a garment or a collection. Instead, it starts with something more fundamental: colour.
Five colours. More than a century of associations. Purchase on Amazon
A CHANEL runway show has rarely been only about the clothes. Gabrielle Chanel presented collections in the intimate surroundings of Rue Cambon. Decades later, Karl Lagerfeld transformed the Grand Palais and other extraordinary locations into elaborate environments for the House’s collections. Virginie Viard continued the tradition with sets that could be understated or atmospheric, while Matthieu Blazy has already introduced his own visual language to the CHANEL runway.
Chanel Shows: Fashion Mise-en-Scène examines this history through the sets and concepts that have accompanied CHANEL collections. Organized around seven themes inspired by Gabrielle Chanel’s principles, the book considers the runway as part of the creative work itself. Fashion, music, architecture, lighting and location become elements of a single presentation.
The book’s foreword by Tilda Swinton adds another perspective. As an actress and longtime CHANEL collaborator, Swinton understands the relationship between fashion, performance and image. The result is a look at one of the House’s most spectacular traditions: turning a fashion show into an experience.
At CHANEL, the runway has become part of the collection. Purchase on Amazon
The newest CHANEL book is also the most personal. For more than three decades, Virginie Viard worked inside the House, first alongside Karl Lagerfeld and later as CHANEL’s artistic director. She joined the House in 1986, spent a period working with Lagerfeld at Chloé, returned to CHANEL in 1997 and eventually became artistic director following his death in 2019.
The memoir offers Viard’s account of her career at CHANEL, including her years working beside Lagerfeld, life inside the Rue Cambon ateliers, the creation of collections and fashion shows, and her experience as artistic director. It also addresses the abrupt end of her tenure in 2024. This makes the book different from the other titles in this group. The previous books look at CHANEL through objects, images, chronology, colour and spectacle. Viard’s book looks inward.
For a designer who spent much of her career away from the centre of public attention, Un regard is an opportunity to reconsider her place in the House’s history in her own words.
After three decades at CHANEL, Virginie Viard finally tells her story. Purchase on Amazon
Taken together, these six books offer six different ways of looking at the same House. Their timing is particularly interesting as they provide a way to look backward while a new chapter is being written.
CHANEL has always been a House that understands the value of its history. But its history has never been static. Each generation has taken familiar ideas and found new ways to interpret them. Perhaps that is why there will always be another CHANEL book to read.
There is always another collection to revisit, another photograph to reconsider, another colour to understand, another show to remember and, occasionally, another voice ready to tell us what it was really like to be there.
The story of CHANEL is already more than a century old. The next chapter is still being written.
For more on CHANEL books, read: CHANEL & LITERATURE
Image Credit: @maison.de.chanel