The Art of Craft: How Tom Sachs and Chanel Teamed Up to Create a Limited-Edition ID Card for the Art World

The Art of Craft is a new series in which Artnet
News shares the story behind the making of a special design
object.

Tom Sachs has teamed up
with Chanel to create a limited-edition ID and custom ID
holder—but if you want one of your own, you’ll have to go through
the artist’s signature “indoctrination program.”

The artist debuted the art object at last week’s Art Production
Fund gala in New York City, where he and his wife, Gagosian
director Sarah Hoover, were the guests of honor. It was Hoover—a
friend of the French house—who connected Sachs with Chanel, and
brought the luxury fashion brand on board as an event sponsor.

“This is entirely Sarah’s doing,” Sachs told Artnet News at the
gala, while snacking on pigs in a blanket. Hoover designed the
night’s over-the-top menu, a mix of comfort food—hamburgers, tater
tots, ice cream sundaes—and more high-end comestibles such as
caviar from Regalis Foods and champagne courtesy Ruinart. But it
was Sachs who insisted on his own supply of puff pastry-wrapped
mini hotdogs.

Sachs spent much of the evening’s cocktail hour hanging out at
the Chanel nail bar, which he designed in collaboration with the
brand, where guests could get a manicure featuring custom nail
decals conceived by the artist.

But the “indoctrination process” came first, and if you passed
the test—which is actually given to prospective Sachs studio
employees—you got an official ID from the Tom Sachs Space
Program.

“It’s sort of like when you wear a Yankees hat,” he explained,
before I protested that I was a Mets fan. “You’re not on
the Mets, but you’re part of the Mets family. So today you are part
of the team, and so is everyone here.”

Sachs has expressed a wariness about brand partnerships in the
past. His only other collaboration was with Nike, for which he
produced a line of coveted sneakers and athletic apparel. His DIY
woodshop aesthetic seems at first glance to be at odds with
Chanel’s elegance. But the artist has actually incorporated the
company’s logo into his work in the past.

“I’ve always loved Chanel, it’s kind of the NASA of fashion,” he
said. “It’s a powerful brand—the logo and the identity and history.
It’s got force.”

To unveil the new collaboration, Sachs restaged a performance
art piece from the 1996 Armory Show—then called the Gramercy
International Art Fair—titled Sick Nails. Among the
art world luminaries who got their nails done by Sachs all those
years ago was the cofounder of the Art Production Fund, Yvonne
Force-Villareal, who was delighted by the repeat performance.

“It’s an honor to do Yvonne’s nails again,” Sachs shared.

The artist actually built the Chanel nail bar over the summer
after Hoover came home from a brand event with a goodie bag full of
Chanel nail polishes. Initially, Sachs was considering using a
custom camera he’d built some years ago to take portraits of guests
at the gala, but he found that developing the images took an
impractically long amount of time.

When the Art Production Fund team saw the manicure station at
Sachs’s studio, they quickly shifted gears: the only portrait would
be the ID card, and the main event would be the nail bar.

Once Chanel came on board to produce the nail decals and employ
the help of manicurists for the event, Sachs got the idea for the
custom badge holder, crafted from wood, metal, and bullet proof
glass. Originally envisioned as a kind of lanyard, the piece soon
morphed into more of a mini-bag, albeit one that can also hang on
the wall or be displayed on your desk.

He mimicked the Chanel handbag chain by weaving a special rope
through industrial-grade chainlink and used pyrography to burn the
brand’s logo onto the back.

At first, Hoover was worried about how Chanel might react.

“It’s one thing to steal their branding for a piece that sits at
a museum,” she said. “It’s another to do that at an event that’s in
collaboration with them. But he was like, ‘I don’t care, it will
look so cool.’”

And fortunately, the brand had no objections.

“The combination of something really bricolage and handmade, and
something as finished and high-end and fancy as the Chanel logo, is
really interesting,” Hoover said. “Chanel is this luxury brand that
makes tons of units of everything, but they have an unprecedented
emphasis on the handmade. The hours of manpower and workmanship
that goes into so many things they make is incredibly
personal.”

At the gala, getting the ID and manicure was $500. The VIP
experience, with the limited-edition Chanel ID holder, was $5,000.
Fortunately for those still interested, it’s still available by
contacting the Art Production Fund directly—and passing the test.
(All proceeds benefit the organization.)

And for Art Production Fund director Casey Fremont, the event
could not have gone any better.

“The Tom Sachs Space Program Indoctrination and Reeducation
Center including the Chanel Nail Station, the Sarah Hoover-curated
menu including caviar and cheeseburgers—every detail represented
them both individually and as a perfectly matched couple,” she
said.

The post The Art of Craft: How Tom Sachs and Chanel Teamed
Up to Create a Limited-Edition ID Card for the Art World
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