Chanel’s revolutionary quilting comes to life in this elegant vintage shoulder bag. The zip top opens to a maroon leather lining, zip pocket and two opens pockets. Two elegant chain-and-leather straps complete the look.

It’s available online for $4639!

The Camélia was Mlle. Chanel’s favorite flower and she adorned herself with this bloom often, so much so, that the Camélia is an important part of the company’s branding.

The collection features 3 themes: Camélia Sculpté (sculpted black onyx and white cacholong with diamonds), Fil de Camélia (white gold with diamonds) and Camélia Ajouré (yellow gold).

The Camélia Sculpté collection is a twist on Mlle. Chanel’s favorite color combination: “Feminine and delicate, . . . [the Camélia Sculpté collection] draws on the refinement and perfect harmony of the contrast between black and white, the two fundamental colours [sic] of Chanel.” The Fil de Camélia collection is for the girls who consider diamonds to be their best friend.

Luxury watchmakers are well positioned to escape a possible slowdown in consumer spending as they target wealthy customers who are increasingly willing to splash out on extravagant and unique watches.

Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome’s “Day&Night” watch — which does not tell the time, only whether it is night or day — sold out within 48 hours of its launch earlier this year as watch fanatics snapped up the $300,000 timepiece.

“When you ask people what is the ultimate luxury, 80 percent answer ‘time’. Then when you look at other studies, 67 percent don’t look at their watch to tell what time it is,” Chief Executive Yvan Arpa told Reuters on Friday at Baselworld, the watch and jewellery industry’s largest annual trade fair.

“Why do people buy expensive watches? To have a trophy. A watch (costing) $9 gives the time as well as a watch at $500,000, so they really buy a trophy,” Arpa said.

The “Day&Night” watch uses the complicated Tourbillon movement — invented to overcome earth’s gravity which used to affect the accuracy of watches — which lures watch connoisseurs as well as fashion aficionados.

The Geneva-based company, founded in 2004, also has an order backlog of up to two-and-a-half years for its “Titanic DNA” watch, which is made from steel and coal from the Titanic and can cost as much as $500,000.

“If you do something that is different, which is interesting, it pays,” Arpa said.

NEW MARKETS BOOM

Luxury watchmakers are also banking on buoyant demand from emerging markets, such as Asia and the Middle East to offset a slowdown in the United States.

“The first quarter of the year has been very good — following the same trend as last year and last year was a record year for the watch industry and for the major luxury companies in general,” Philippe Mougenot, president of Chanel’s fine jewellery and watches division, told Reuters.

“Now we are a bit on the look out to see what consumption will be (like) within the next months in the States … There is a lot of psychologically negative talk through the press and this may have some impact,” Mougenot said.

“But the big difference now (compared) with 10 years ago is that we have new markets that were not existing at that time,” he said.

Chanel has seen its high-end watch and jewellery products selling “astonishingly well”. One its most pricey pieces is the “J12 18 place Vendome” watch, costing 550,000 euros ($864,100).

And the head of Swiss watchmaker La Montre Hermes, part of French luxury group Hermes International, has also seen strong sales.

“During a crisis, people have another level of consciousness. It doesn’t mean that they will not buy, it is just that they are looking more carefully at what they buy,” La Montre Hermes CEO Emmanuel Raffner told Reuters.

Gucci, the flagship brand of French luxury group PPR, is the world’s most coveted luxury brand according to a global luxury brands survey by The Nielsen Company.

In the latest survey, one in five global consumers said they would choose to buy Gucci (over any other luxury brand) if money was no option, making the Italian fashion brand that was revived by Tom Ford in the 1990’s the most coveted and aspirational luxury brand in the world today.

Chanel and Calvin Klein tied for second place in Nielsen’s 48-country global online survey that was conducted in November 2007.

The “Mobile Art” exhibition of Chanel will début its worldwide tour in Hong Kong this month.

Resulting from a collaboration between Architect Zaha Hadid and Karl Lagerfeld this boundary-breaking project will tour from 2008 to 2010 from Hong Kong to Paris, Tokyo, New York, LA, London and finally Moscow.

The Chanel Contemporary Art Container - a collapsible, futuristic pavilion - is a celebration of Chanel’s cultural importance and displays the brand’s heritage in a new way.

Chanel commissioned fifteen internationally renowned contemporary artists to create works inspired by the iconic quilted Chanel 2.55 shoulder bag which was originally introduced by Coco Chanel in February 1955.