It started in 1985 with the purchase of century-old but declining costume jeweler Georges Desrues – and currently Chanel’s Métiers d’art employs more than 5000 craftspeople. The shows for its annual collection are amongst fashion’s most anticipated events.

Now the Métiers d’art is getting a new 25,000 square meter Paris headquarters, dubbed Le 19m, which has actually been happening fairly under the radar since construction began in the autumn of 2018. And located in the somewhat remote (in relation to the city center) working class district of La Porte d’Aubervilliers, it has mostly escaped the everyday view of the French fashion and media cognoscenti.

But the exalted fashion house has just released a set of renderings, following an October 8th ceremony marking the completion of the overall structural work. And actual photos come by way of the capturing of artist Case Maclaim‘s ongoing mural work along the perimeter, which is meant to pay tribute to the work of the artisans employed to see it through to completion.

It’s a bit of architectural “meta,” if you will.

“Le 19M is an ambitious project,” explains Chanel President Bruno Pavlovsky, “as much for its urban and architectural qualities as for its functionality and its objectives in terms of innovation and sustainable development. Our goal is to maintain and develop the exceptional heritage of the Métiers d’art, at the crossroads of Paris’s cultural influence and the societal issues of fashion.”

The project will be completed in 2020, and also feature a 1200 square meter “agora” (the Ancient Greek word for “assembly”), a public space for gathering and the exchange of ideas.

Photos by Vianney Le Caer

When Timothée Chalamet, as Henry V, worries out loud, “I’ve been forced to rely on the counsel of men whose loyalty I question every waking moment. I need men around me I can trust,” it’s hard not to transpose those words to the current occupant of the American White House. Yet, as Niccolò Machiavelli was so keen to point out (decades later and in a different country), isn’t that the worry of everyone in power?

Since winning a 2018 Best Actor Oscar for Call Me By Your Name, Chalamet has been primed for an epic role to rocket his young career to the next level of gravitas – and his turn as the exalted English sovereign in Netflix’ The King just might be it. Especially as, rather than settling on the usual heroism halo (as Henry is given by Shakespeare, upon whose writings the film is loosely based), we get a stark, brutal meditation on the cold, isolating realities of power. To be sure, Joel Edgerton as Falstaff tells him bluntly, “Kings have no friends. Only followers, and foes.”

And indeed, Chalamet doesn’t play Henry with Kenneth Branagh‘s towering dauntlessness – but rather with much existential anxiety. So we have a leader for this 21st Century age of self-reflection and self-doubt, despite his story taking place more than 600 years ago. And the war, even the glorious victory at the Battle of Agincourt, is depicted with unmitigated grimness. Still, the actor takes him from neophyte monarch to worldly warrior king via a convincing emotional arc.

Directed by David Michôd (writer/creator of Animal Kingdom), The King is visually arresting, especially in its depiction of the gruesomeness of war. It also gets good performances out of Lily-Rose Depp, Sean Harris, and Robert Pattison as the Dauphine of France. But it is Chalamet’s vehicle to be sure, with his Henry V so perfectly embodying all the film’s modern world moral ambiguities.

The King will be in theaters November 1.

Photo by Shervin Lainez

The thing about art…it has a way of expressing what we often find ourselves so unable to express – especially in times of real tragedy and sorrow. And adversity (war, illness, natural disasters) does have a way binding us together more viscerally than we may have ever thought possible.

Singer Rachael Sage was diagnosed with endometrial (uterine) cancer in 2018, and fought a battle that she seems to have won – the disease having now gone into complete remission. But perhaps as importantly, for herself and for all those fighting that same fight, she has put the experience into words that capture all the pain, confusion and heroism of the struggle so beautifully and poignantly. Indeed, her absolutely shiver-inducing new single “Bravery’s on Fire” (which BlackBook premieres here) is a remarkably open and unflinching account of what she went through emotionally, and is sure to act as inspiration to so many others going through the same.

“I went on a very internal journey to summon strength I never knew I had,” she reveals. “The song is about finding the courage to admit one’s own vulnerability and fragility – which can be very challenging for anyone, let alone a performer, to embrace.”

Of course, along with such an event come all the usual exhortations on never taking life for granted – but it is absolutely something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.

“It is an indescribable privilege to wake up every morning and decide what to do with my day,” she explains. “And having come through such an unexpectedly dark time, I’ve certainly heard the wakeup call to be as appreciative and present as possible in my own life.”

The single will be available on all online platforms on October 4, with 100% of the proceeds going to Women’s Cancer Research (during Cancer Awareness Month). Rachael Sage & The Sequins will also perform at two benefit events in NYC during October: An Evening of Music & Dance Benefitting Yoga 4 Cancer at NOW:Yoga on Saturday, October 12 from 8-10pm; and the single release show at Rockwood Music Hall on Tuesday, October 29 at 8:30pm, which will also benefit MGH and Sloan-Kettering.

Dedicated to Donna and Kirstin

Despite its overarching alien/CIA plot line, Stranger Things‘ considerable success likely has had a lot to do with a kind of short-range nostalgia. To be sure, it plays perfectly to a certain sort of yearning for the earnest cynicism of a budding Gen X America, before the internet and social media rendered innocence impossible and youthful skepticism, well, quaint.

Into its aftermath comes this startlingly meditative new film, deceptively titled 18 to Party, by first time director Jeff Roda. The entire narrative takes place over the course of a single evening in 1984, outside (then inside) a ratty-cool post-punk nightclub in small town America. The camera is turned on a group of nerdy/hip, insightful and culturally aware teens, as they pontificate on and earnestly grapple with the “issues” of the day – something like The Breakfast Club meets Waiting For Godot. So a discussion, for instance, on the number classmate deaths over the preceding year comes off at once anxious and also curiously detached, the latter a hallmark of the Gen X modus operandi: let yourself feel…but then act like it was a lapse in judgment.

No surprise then, the perfectly reasonable entreaty, “What are the chances that two kids die on the same day?,” is sneeringly met with, “In this town, pretty fucking good.”

Parents, UFOs, drugs – angel dust, how antiquated – all get a philosophical airing, and the references are spot on (“You can’t hug your kids with nuclear arms.”) A fellow student’s suicide pact is even acknowledged by the gathered as being influenced by a scene in a film, a very modern world observation. In fact, it’s all so knowing, that the soundtrack includes not just a bunch of tired Pretty in Pink rehashes, but something as hip as Orange Juice’s “Blue Boy,” surely a paradigm sonic and emotional encapsulation of its time.

The film also nods to that very-new-at-the-time 1980s phenomenon, whereby media/entertainment had morphed into self critique. To wit, an argument about how much U2 sucks, because they “stole their sound from The Alarm,” concludes with the hilarious statement, “In five years, let’s see who’s still around.” And when one kid snarks, “Who the fuck watches 60 Minutes?,” you can’t help but think that today it would be, “Who the fuck still has an iPhone 4?”

And indeed, if this plot line were transposed to 2019, the characters would likely all be alone in their bedrooms, staring at their phones and face-timing with their not nearly as close friends. Sure, the kids in 18 to Party are sort of self-therapying – but they’re doing it together in a kind of ritualistic manner; they feel distinctly alienated by their times, but they deal with it as a tribe.

It’s in a way about the fading of innocence that comes with the coming of age. But it is surely also a letter of longing for a time when young people turned to other young people for emotional assurance and consolation – a responsibility that has now terrifyingly been handed over to soulless little metal devices.

(N.B. 18 to Party will premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival on October 4.)