TThe birdcage on the Chanel catwalk was empty and the door swung open. After the recent departure of Virginie Viard, the metaphor of a house without a designer – the bird has flown away – and the Chanel Easter egg to the teenage Vanessa Paradis swinging in a birdcage in a 1991 Coco fragrance ad. A wink to the birds that Coco kept at her home in Paris, which itself was a reference.
The cage is made to the size of a golden eagle and almost reaches the height of the Grand Palais’s ceiling, which is 45 meters high. Fitting for a brand that has grown from Coco’s apartment to a $20bn (£15bn) business.
The Grand Palais, a glamorous landmark in central Paris, has had its main entrance renamed the Gabrielle Chanel Entrance, with Chanel spending $25 million on renovations in time for its reopening as a fencing and taekwondo venue for this year’s Olympics. Spent euros.
“Our relationship with the Grand Palais is part of our legend,” Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, said before the show. “These things, if I may say so, have to do with status.”
Pavlovsky declined to say when he would appoint his “next artistic leader,” but acknowledged that the studio team that created the current collection was already working on looks for the December and January shows.
Under Karl Lagerfeld, the Grand Palais was transformed for the show into a space rocket launch pad, a supermarket, a beach, a cruise ship, and more. Chanel’s next designer has a big job in store. “We are not in a hurry. This is not about finding a designer who will stay for two years, but about finding the right person who can embrace Chanel’s huge scale and lead a new vision for the long term. Currently, we are A lot of designers move between brands, and of course we’re one of them.”
According to fashion week rumors, the hat includes the names of designers Hedi Slimane, Peter Mullier, Simon Porte Jacquemus, John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, and even director Sofia Coppola. There is a possibility that there are.
“Some designers like to disrupt, but at Chanel we value loyalty and continuity. Gabrielle Chanel introduced the best codes, Karl was the best at modernizing them, and Virgin continued in the same direction. “Chanel is the greatest of all designers, and Chanel remains Chanel,” was Pavlovsky’s only comment, suggesting some of the more intense names may be out of contention. He hinted at something.
Placeholder collections with no one to bow to can often feel underpowered, especially when the catwalk dwarfs a football field, but the design team is young with their policy of doubling down on house codes. It brought a lot of enthusiasm.
Bouclé tweed suits came with as many shorts as skirts and were in Clueless-era pastel colors. Models twisted their hair into easy buns, wore sunglasses on their heads, and rocked cute mini birdcage bags or carried quilted backpacks. A stronger authorial voice might have edited out the chiffon cape worn over denim and toned down the two-tone lace-up metallic brogues with sky-high platforms; All eyes were on what was going to happen next.
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“Thanks to the Olympics, all of Paris has been able to see the future of the city in a new light,” Pavlovsky said. “The world saw the best of the best of Paris. Everyone was so happy.”
Chanel’s next major catwalk collection will be at December’s Métiers d’Art show, a festival of crafts in Hangzhou, China’s historic center of silk production. “Many people ask why we go to Hangzhou, because the economic slowdown in China is often talked about.However, we have very important customers in China, and when we travel We want to respect the culture. Hangzhou is truly traditional China, so it’s the perfect place to energize and deepen our relationships with Chinese customers,” Pavlovsky said.
