SuzyPFW: Chanel Helps To End Paris Fashion Week On A High

“I was thinking about actresses at the photo call on the red carpet,” she explained. “That moment when they are being called by the photographers, their faces a little distracted, their attitude a little out of sync with the outfits they’re wearing.”

 Or, as Virginie might have added, “With the world situation we are living through”.

In this period of pandemic, when few fashion houses have dared to bring a collection together in Paris, Chanel is one of the few that has kept the live-show flag flying.

 The venue was the Grand Palais, as always during the late Karl Lagerfeld’s long reign at Chanel. Although it was billed as the last event the fashion house would hold in the building, which is supposedly closing for refurbishment, when I interviewed Bruno Pavlosky, President of Fashion at Chanel, for my latest podcast, he told me there will be a few more Chanel presentations there. 

So there we were, in our imaginations perhaps less in Hollywood, with its voluptuous dressing-up, than at the Cannes Film Festival (which was cancelled this year due to Covid-19). What to wear? Something French and snappy, like a pale pink shorts-suit with a neat waistcoat – both of those pieces patterned with the letters of Chanel. The same mix of letters was shaken over jacket pockets or marked loudly on sleeves. Only bared midriffs, allowing a flash of flesh, suggested the cheeky daring that was once the leitmotif of this annual parade of cinema on the French Riviera.

“Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld dressed so many actresses in films and in real life, and I was thinking about those who make us dream so much,” Virginie said. “Without falling into vintage, I wanted it to be very joyful, colourful – and very vibrant too.” 

The designer cited fluorescent coloured jeans, pink Capri pants and those Chanel letters patterned like neon lights. Add sequin embroidery and tiny black-and-white floral prints and the effect was of bold decoration, but kept under control.

It is impressive to find a new string for the bow that has played Chanel’s music for so many years. Photographers Inez and Vinoodh added a visual mix of Cannes, Hollywood and Paris, with pictures for editors and the industry, all in black and white, with a sophisticated figure standing in for a modern Coco – except in one image she was talking into an old-fashioned cord telephone!

The show underscored the energy of ‘Coco’, as Mademoiselle Chanel was known in her young days. She died in 1971, but is brought back to life in Paris this season by the exhibition, ‘Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto’ at the Palais Galliera. 

The Chanel company has invested more than seven million euros in the project to open the vaulted underground of this building which, surprisingly, is the only permanent museum in Paris dedicated to fashion. The new area is called ‘The Gabrielle Chanel Rooms’, but ultimately it will contain exhibitions devoted to other designers. 

Lagerfeld himself was perceived as a superhuman machine, sending out many collections each year. And Virginie, used to that pace, seems to be following the same route. A collection for Métiers d’Art 2020 – Virginie’s second – displaying the skills of specialist suppliers will take place at the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire. 

Meanwhile, connecting Coco Chanel to the fantasy world of cinema worked well as an uplifting show in difficult times.