Frequent PALMER contributor and renowned photographer Roe Ethridge is the subject of a new exhibition titled Fugue for 31 Rue Cambon: Roe Ethridge at Chanel Archives, opening this week at CHANEL Nexus Hall in Tokyo.
On view through April 18, 2026, the project originates from an invitation extended by CHANEL to Ethridge to engage directly with the House’s Patrimoine and with the iconic private apartment of Gabrielle Chanel at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. The artist was granted access to a constellation of objects that map Chanel’s intellectual and aesthetic life: a bust of Chanel by Jacques Lipchitz; a manuscript of Poèmes pour Misia by Pierre Reverdy; a volume dedicated to Chanel by Gala and Salvador Dalí; Pablo Picasso’s sketches for Le Tricorne; and an Egyptian funerary mask from the second century AD.
Jacques Lipchitz, Coco Chanel, tête nue, plaster cast, 1921. CHANEL sunglasses, Ready-to-Wear Fall-Winter 2002/03. Patrimoine de CHANEL, Paris ©CHANEL / Roe Ethridge
Using these precious historical objects, Ethridge constructs precise studio compositions, placing them within a controlled mise-en-scènes, pairing them with contemporary props, and reframing them through shifts in lighting and scale. The resulting photographs introduce a new way to consider Gabrielle Chanel’s legacy, suspending her possessions outside a strictly historical reading and allowing them to operate in the present.
The exhibition reflects CHANEL’s longstanding engagement with artists. Gabrielle Chanel maintained close relationships with and supported figures such as Cocteau, Picasso, Reverdy, and Diaghilev, embedding artistic exchange into the fabric of the House from its inception. Nexus Hall extends that lineage by commissioning contemporary artists to engage with CHANEL’s cultural legacy.
Roe Ethridge, Egyptian Funerary Mask and Me, 2025, UV cured pigment print, 50 x 80 inches (127 x 203.2 cm.)
Born in Miami, Ethridge has developed a practice that moves fluidly between commercial and fine art photography. His work blurs distinctions between genres, allowing still life, portraiture, and image culture to overlap. In previous projects for PALMER, including Miami Vices featuring visual artist Rachel Feinstein in Vol. 6 and The Church Mouse in Vol. 9, he approached settings and objects with a similarly analytical eye, seeing them as carriers of memory, treating material form as lived history.
Lulu Sylbert and Roe Ethridge, The Church Mouse for PALMER Vol. 9
CHANEL and Ethridge are a fitting pair. Ethridge’s work has consistently examined how objects accrue meaning and how the ideal is constructed through image. At 31 rue Cambon, he encountered a legacy already dense with history and myth. The Tokyo exhibition brings that tension into view, positioning the CHANEL archive alongside an artist whose practice has long interrogated the boundaries between image, commerce, and art.