The person in Gao Jing's photograph has already done the sensible thing. They have stopped in front of a gold bird-and-flower screen, and someone has set the word LESAGE into it in red. That was the press tour on 24 September, on the third floor of the Museum of Art Pudong. Chanel has the whole floor through 15 November, eleven ateliers somewhere on it, under the name la Galerie du 19M Shanghai. If the afternoon is short, make it the screen. Lesage is the house that embroiders and weaves the tweed. The rest of the floor gets more interesting once you know what a century of that work actually looks like.
le 19M is the workshop building Chanel opened in Paris in 2021, at 2 place Skanderbeg, for those specialist maisons and nearly 700 artisans. The gallery is the part you can walk into. It left Paris twice before this. Dakar, in 2023, was a short first chapter. Tokyo was three weeks from 30 September 2025, on the 52nd floor of Mori Tower, and about 74,800 people came. Shanghai is the one you can still plan, and it runs longer than Tokyo did: 25 September to 15 November, all of 3F, at 2777 Binjiang Avenue. Jean Nouvel's museum, open to the public since 8 July 2021 and run by Lujiazui Group, sits beside the Oriental Pearl, across the river from the Bund. The tower is the view. The screen is why you crossed.
A century of samples, and then Shanghai's own room
Lesage: 100 Years of Fashion and Decoration was developed with Émilie Hammen. Paris already had a centenary hang, from September 2024 to January 2025. This edition is a new one. The atelier dates to 1924, has worked with Chanel since 1983, and joined the métiers d'art in 2002. What keeps the room from feeling like a boutique is the archive: more than 75,000 embroidery samples and nearly 30,000 tweed references, hung in four parts. Embroidery, tweed, interiors, and the way the skill gets passed on. A jacket on a runway is the last five minutes of a sample that may have sat in a cabinet for years. Pudong has the cabinet.
Several pieces Matthieu Blazy made with the atelier are being shown for the first time, set into that century. He is the artistic director of Chanel fashion. His first Métiers d'Art show for the house was on 2 December 2025, on a disused platform at the Bowery station in New York, and Lesage wove the leopard tweed. If you saw the clothes only while they were moving, this floor is the drawer they came out of.
The China in the samples is older than the Shanghai dates. One of them is Gabrielle Chanel's Coromandel screens. Another is a Chinese silk embroidery that Lesage Intérieurs put back together for Victor Hugo's red salon. Shanghai was already in the cabinet.
Learn one more house, then let the wall finish the list. Lemarié holds the feathers and the camellias. Christelle Kocher has directed it since 2010, and the pleating workshop, Atelier Lognon, sits inside it. Hats, shoes, gold, costume jewelry, the soft dressmaking, a furnishing cloth, a second embroidery room: they are labeled, which is as much naming as an hour can bear. Les Maisons, designed by Studio Adrien Gardère, is the front room, archives and film and a wall of needles, hooks, embossing molds, and jewelry files. Point a phone at a tool and the mini program will tell you the use. Twice is amusing. The third time, go back to the tweed.
A Sense of Touch, 触碰, is the middle chapter, and it is the reason the show is a Shanghai exhibition. Gong Yan, artistic director of the Power Station of Art, sits with Lin Tianmiao, the Beijing artist, who also has work in it; Zhang Lei, who founded Pinwu and the Rong Design Library in Hangzhou; and Kocher. They read more than 200 portfolios and commissioned 17 new works. Ding Yi and Yin Xiuzhen are on the wall with them. The museum's list runs past thirty names. Lacquer, indigo, ceramic, and bamboo sit beside the French stitching. Lesage first. Those commissions second. A lap of every maison is how the hour disappears.
Morandi is downstairs through 28 October
If you can go before 28 October, Giorgio Morandi is still on the first and second floors, on the same ticket, and he wants an hour of his own. After that date the reason to cross the river is the third floor.
The door is the tedious part, and it is easy to miss. The museum has dropped ordinary timed entry. A same-day ticket is still required, and the third floor wants a slot on top of it. Follow the official le 19M account on WeChat, take the slot in the mini program, then buy the Museum of Art Pudong ticket for that day. In May the city priced one ticket at 80 yuan and said it covered every exhibition then on view. The October page does not reprint the number, so check the museum's own mini program the morning you go. Doors are 10:00 to 21:00, last entry at 20:00. Line 2 to Lujiazui, Exit 2, and walk in from Fucheng Road by the Pearl. There is no parking in the building. The International Convention Center garage, at 2727 Binjiang Avenue, is the lot that works.
Workshops sit on the same mini program. The one that belongs to this committee is Knot So Easy: Zhang Lei's library teaching a Chinese knot. Paloma has a wisteria hut. Lesage, with the artist Aristide, runs one called Murmuration. Take one if a child is with you. If the hour is yours, leave them. The galleries are the visit.
The Bund is the view through the glass, which The Banquet Guide to Shanghai already walks. Give the Power Station of Art its own West Bund afternoon. Gong Yan's museum and this committee are the same conversation on different days. Schiaparelli’s V&A Exhibition Treats Fashion as Surrealist Art is the London version of the instinct: put the atelier in a public room and let people stand close.
You have until 15 November. The slot is the booking. The museum ticket comes after it.
