CHANEL, le19M and The King's Foundation show the 2026 Métiers d'Art Fellowship work at The Garrison Chapel on Thursday 10 September 2026, over breakfast.
Gabrielle Chanel founded her house in Paris in 1910, and the maisons d’art that supply it, the embroiderers, feather workers, milliners and button makers, are now gathered in one purpose-built Paris building called le19M. The King’s Foundation is the educational charity King Charles III established in 1990, when he was Prince of Wales, to teach traditional building and making crafts. The two set up this fellowship together in 2023 to train British artisans to the standard the Paris ateliers work to.
Those skills are held by very few people and are lost in a generation if nobody is paid to pass them on. A fellow spends a year on embroidery, millinery or fashion production, with mentorship and time inside the Parisian workshops, and comes out able to work at couture level in a country that had almost no route to that training.
The 2026 exhibition shows this year’s graduating fellows at The Garrison Chapel on Thursday 10 September, from half past eight until half past ten, over breakfast. Walpole convenes the morning and takes the RSVPs. What is on the walls is the year’s output rather than a display of the partnership, so the work is being judged on the same terms as anything else made this year. Walpole represents 270 British luxury brands and convenes several such mornings across a season.