HAUTE CULTURE

Chanel's Yana Peel is officiating the marriage of high art and high fashion.

- VÉRONIQUE HYLAND

Yana Peel gets a lot of work done on trains. Sitting in her London office, double-C buttons glinting from her black-and-white sweater and star-shaped earrings sparkling in her ears, she tells me that the Eurostar trip to Paris is "a very happy zone for me....When I was with Hans Ulrich [Obrist] at the Serpentine Galleries, we would say, 'Never complain if you're on a train." It makes sense that Peel would be most comfortable in motion. Her work as the president of arts, culture, and heritage for Chanel requires her to not only cross a dizzying number of latitudes and longitudes, but also traverse genres, overseeing the house's involvement in visual art and culture.

One day you'll find the peripatetic Peel in conversation with Misty Copeland at Davos; the next, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival with playwright Anna Deavere Smith. In the mode of Gabrielle Chanel, who was friends with (and, in some cases, a patron to) artistic figures like Picasso, Stravinsky, and Diaghilev, she feels comfortable moving between worlds.

Peel often finds herself citing the Andy Warhol quote “Good business is the best art.” Russia-born, Canada-bred, she has a finance background and worked at Goldman Sachs. Post-Goldman, she quickly made inroads into the art and nonprofit spheres, cofounding the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, a nonprofit that connects artists with patrons, and the live debate platform Intelligence Squared, which hosts discussions on various subjects.