Chanel pays 1.3 million annually to expand the Boutique of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Chanel has signed a new agreement with the city of Milan to occupy the spaces of the historic Cobianchi daytime hotel in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan and to expand its boutique to include the adjacent Oxus space, which had left the Gallery in October 2020. The rent that the brand has committed to pay is 1.3 million euros a year for the next 18 years – the total space that Chanel will find itself occupying is 1,351.94 square meters with an investment planned for the redevelopment of over 1.8 million. Specifically, the historic daytime hotel Cobianchi will be used as an exhibition area, for the sale of products and beauty treatments, suggesting that the Liberty spaces of the former daytime hotel could also become visitable by the general public on the occasion of events and exhibitions.

It is particularly interesting, in the story, the recovery of the daytime hotel Cobianchi which, together with the former daytime hotel Venice in Piazza Oberdan, is one of the few surviving examples of this type of accommodation born in the first half of the '900. Especially during the '20s, the chain of underground daytime hotels founded by Cleopatro Cobianchi represented a new frontier of luxury, a response to the increase in tourist traffic in Italy, which provided in a unitary structure located in the main city centers a series of aesthetic services similar to modern spas, with the addition, however, of barbers and hairdressers but also stockbrokers. The structures, designed by the best architects of the time, are today an extraordinary document of luxury at the time of Art Deco – whose function, today, can be revisited by luxury brands such as Chanel that also deal with beauty.