Text by Caroline Issa

According to legend, the West Lake in Hangzhou, China, was born from an act of craftsmanship: a dragon and a phoenix made it their task to polish a jade stone into a shining, pearlescent ball. Learning of the beauty of the ball, the covetous goddess Wangmu sent her deities to steal it. When they realised it had been stolen, the dragon and the phoenix fought Wangmu for the ball, where it fell from the heavens and transformed into the West Lake. Today, the mountains that frame the Lake are said to represent the dragon and the phoenix, eternally guarding their creation.

As the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou was a nexus of Chinese cosmopolitanism, with the West Lake as its crowning jewel. In his notes from his trip across the Silk Road, Marco Polo described the city as “the finest and the noblest in the world”. Over centuries, art from the North China Plain and beyond has rendered the West Lake as a poetic union of nature and human design, and it’s featured in silhouette on Chinese passports and banknotes today.

One admirer of Hangzhou’s beauty was Gabrielle Chanel. A fervent collector of 19th-century Chinese coromandel screens, her favourite, a study of the West Lake, held pride of place in her study room on Rue Cambon in Paris. When Chanel hosted their pre-fall Métiers d’arts collection in Hangzhou in December 2024, guests were ushered onto the water boats and transported to a time when transport was leisurely and a whole afternoon could be spent crossing the lake. Upon entering the show’s location, it was as if Coco’s famed private quarters and coromandel had come to life, the boxed runway set perched above the waters of the West Lake itself, the models doing their finale walk as the moon reflected in the water. The collection’s meticulously detailed embellishments – floral patterns, fruit motifs and bird designs – were created by 12 artisanal workshops at 19M near the 19th Arrondissement. Like the mythological lake itself, it was an ode to the patience and craft required to make something of true beauty.

With each atelier working alongside one another in the seven-floor space, the building allows for a new level of creative cross-pollination for the brand. Every item in the collection, from draping pagoda sleeves, jet-black overcoats and boots based on a pair worn by Gabrielle Chanel in the 1960s, was the result of this synergy. “The process is based in conversation,” notes Aska Yamashita, artistic director of embroidery atelier Montex, whose Luneville hook and needle embroidery covers the archive-inspired boots. Antoine Besnard, who runs the shoemaker atelier Massaro and makes the wooden lasts that ensure boots fit perfectly, concurs. “At the beginning, we don’t necessarily have the desire to create something together at all costs. As the creation process unfolds, on one side with embroidery and on the other with shoes, suddenly, a meeting becomes possible.”

Some of 19M’s workshops have over a hundred years of craftsmanship heritage, and the artisans working across them today similarly pass down knowledge that cannot be learned overnight. Excellence, according to Antoine, is less a destination than a continuous pursuit. “To make a pair of shoes requires at least three or four very distinct skills, and no one masters them all. In a way, a single lifetime is not enough for one person to make a complete pair of boots alone.” One pair of Massaro boots might pass through the hands of 25 people before they are ready to be worn. “Depending on whose hands are working on the piece, the fabric can react differently,” explains Aska. “That’s why there’s always an adjustment phase, even if we anticipate and allow for some extra material. The time required to make everything fit the pattern correctly is long. We steam, we add, we remove. Each sequin you see in the garment has been placed one by one – I don’t even remember how many materials we used.” A pair of beige silk satin ankle boots can take hundreds of hours to complete, being handcrafted by Massaro and embroidered by Lesage with cloud motifs and snow-capped mountains inspired by Coromandel panels.

In the contemporary fashion landscape, where speed of production takes precedence over quality or ethics, the life of a craftsman can seem anachronistic. Antoine admits it takes a certain life philosophy to weather the challenges of the profession. “Choosing a manual career today is a radical decision. It naturally filters out certain personality types.” Perseverance, attention to detail and patience are essential factors, as is a certain Zen disposition towards doing the highly repetitive actions that go into making truly luxurious clothes. Still, this being fashion, a certain urgency is required as deadlines draw closer. Antoine is bashful on the subject: “That’s the paradox – we work in a field where creating an object takes a lot of time, but we never have enough time.”

Time, ultimately, is what creates luxury. Not just in the hours spent creating pieces in respective ateliers, but also in the knowledge that a garment will last. As with Hangzhou’s West Lake, true beauty reveals itself in what endures. .