Chanel buys Charvet, deepening its ties to French craftsmanship.
Chanel has acquired Charvet, the Paris shirtmaker celebrated for its bespoke shirts, suits, and accessories. The house said the move is meant to safeguard Charvet’s craftsmanship and heritage while preserving its creative independence. The deal follows a string of collaborations between the two houses under artistic director Matthieu Blazy, including a shirt from his debut collection that reportedly sold out immediately, and a follow-up partnership for resort 2027. Chanel’s president of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky pointed to a historical connection as well: Boy Capel, a formative figure in Gabrielle Chanel’s life, was once a Charvet client.
The value of disputed objects at the Met tops $95 million after new seizures.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection continues to shrink as more objects are traced back to their countries of origin. Following a fresh round of seizures in June, including ancient sculptures and vessels acquired between 1971 and 2001, the total value of objects surrendered by the museum has climbed to $95 million. Since 2017, investigators have removed 120 objects worth between $20,000 and $26 million apiece from the Met’s holdings, alongside hundreds of smaller items tied to trafficking networks. The recoveries stem from a joint effort between the Met’s own provenance research team, now a 12-person unit led by former Sotheby’s restitution chief Lucian Simmons, and the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan DA’s office, which has subpoenaed records tied to dealers suspected of obscuring how objects were acquired.
A 200-year-old bronze Laocoön sold for six times its estimate.
A life-sized bronze cast of Laocoön and His Sons has set a new auction record for Neoclassical sculpture, selling for £13.6 million at Sotheby’s London, nearly six times its original estimate of £3 million. The bronze traces back to a plaster cast Napoleon claimed from Rome under the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, which sculptor Auguste-Jean Marie Carbonneaux later used to produce four bronzes in 1817. This one passed through the collections of novelist William Beckford and the Dukes of Buckingham and Hamilton before industrialist Thomas Merthyr Guest acquired it in 1882; his family held onto it until today’s sale, its first time at auction in 150 years.
Tate Modern is staging the U.K’s biggest Ana Mendieta exhibition.
Ana Mendieta, the Cuban-born American artist whose work reshaped the trajectory of contemporary art, is getting her work exhibited in the UK. Starting on July 15, Tate Modern is opening a major exhibition dedicated to Mendieta, bringing together many of her iconic works alongside newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, a number of which have never before been shown in Britain. True to Mendieta’s own practice, the show will be extending outdoors to reflect her lifelong engagement with the natural world.
Sharjah unveils 32 global participants for its third architecture triennial, opening this fall.
The Sharjah Architecture Triennial has announced dates and a full participant list for its third edition, titled Architecture Otherwise: Building Civic Infrastructure for Collective Futures. Staged across sites in Sharjah, UAE, the exhibition runs from November 14, 2026, through April 14, 2027, and brings together 32 participants working across disciplines. Curated by anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao and Tau Tavengwa, highlights include Chinese-American studio People’s Architecture Office, which will reimagine flatbed handcarts as stages for performance and community activity, and Rajesh Vora with the National Institute of Design, showing a photographic archive of India’s Sabarmati River.
Today’s attractive distractions:
French jewelry house Mellerio turns back to the 1950s for its newest collection.
Erling Haaland, a serious Birkin collector, continues to carry Norway through the World Cup.
Bangkok Studio TAKEHOMEDESIGN is transforming delivery containers into furniture.
Paris-based illustrator Ayame Uchima creates drawings that look like lace.
