Yvonne Dudel and Jean Cazaubon were the studio directors who led Chanel's haute couture through the long interval between Gabrielle Chanel's death in January 1971 and the arrival of Karl Lagerfeld in 1983. Both had worked inside the house during Chanel's lifetime, and their task, as the house's owners understood it, was continuity: to keep alive a style that its founder had refined over decades and that her clients wished to see preserved rather than reinvented.
Immediately after Chanel's death the collections were overseen by Gaston Berthelot, previously of Dior, before Dudel and Cazaubon took over as the house's artistic directors. Under them the couture collections stayed close to the codes of the founder: the collarless tweed suit with braided trim, gilt buttons and chain-weighted hems, the silk blouse, the camellia, the contrast of beige and black. Auction records and museum collections document their work season by season through the 1970s, from a 1974 evening ensemble in camellia-printed silk and tweed covered in translucent sequins to green tweed day suits of 1975 and wool coats with fox collars from 1976.
Their period is often described as a time when Chanel was respected but sleepy, its fashion overshadowed by its fragrances, above all No. 5. In 1978 the house added a modern ready-to-wear line, Chanel Créations, directed by Philippe Guibourgé. When Alain Wertheimer, whose family owned the house, appointed Karl Lagerfeld to take charge of couture in 1983, the careful stewardship of Dudel and Cazaubon gave way to a more radical reinterpretation. Garments from their years now appear regularly at auction, catalogued under their names.