The weekend is still fresh in your bones. The mountain festival isn’t until tomorrow, so we don’t want to think about Friday yet. Tuesdays, on the other hand, are not too popular during this haute couture marathon in Paris. Unless, and now comes the big exception, then of all times Chanel is on the agenda. Then a Tuesday can take off and even feel like a Friday. “It sounds like a cliché. But if it’s a Chanel day in Paris, then it’s a Chanel day in Paris,” wrote the influencer Beka Gvishiani yesterday on his readable and entertaining Instagram profile “Style not com”. The man is right.
And everywhere you can see what he means by that. In the numerous boutiques of this most French of all luxury brands, shoe boxes are piled up and customers are thronging. In the restaurants, finely blow-dried ladies dressed in typical tweed costumes enjoy their light lunch. Bellmen carry pickup trucks carrying bags with the world-famous logo into hotel lobbies. The epicenter of this pilgrimage is directly opposite the École Militaire. There, Virginie Viard, the Chanel designer, showed her couture collection for spring and summer twice a day.
In just under a quarter of an hour – with the exception of Giorgio Armani, no show lasts longer – the very best, selected clientele, along with stars and editors-in-chief, get an impression of what characterizes the beauty, power and success of Chanel.
Like no other luxury brand, Viard succeeds in interpreting the history of the house, from founder Coco Chanel to Karl Lagerfeld, in such a way that the creations look completely new – but are still clearly Chanel. There are no experiments here. Why? Business is booming. More and more women want to bask in the glory of the double C, even if just by purchasing a pair of sunglasses. But the handbag business and the fashion collections are also successful, despite regular price increases. Even haute couture, which polishes the image of some houses but makes financial losses, is highly profitable at Chanel. You know your customers.
Of course, Viard has it easier as a designer than other brands because she has a variety of iconic products. The “Little Black Jacket” for example, the tweed fabric, the costume jewelry chains with the CC logo, the camellia flower as a design detail. References that are familiar to almost everyone, never aging, forever inviolable.
And suddenly it’s all about the button
For the current season, Virginie Viard chose an actually underestimated detail – the button. To ensure that everyone on the circular catwalk understands what their focus is, an oversized button with the Chanel logo is lowered diagonally across the floor at the beginning of the show. It forms the decoration for the models, all of whose looks can be described as “beautiful in the classic sense”. At the beginning there are white tweed ensembles with fine stripes in bright colors, followed by outfits in pastel tones. Black looks also fit into the picture. The decorated buttons of course anyway. As always at a couture show, the finale is a wedding dress. What is striking is how young, light and fresh the collection appears. Viard takes away the heaviness of the tweed fabric. The length of the short skirts ensures casualness. They are worn with white, opaque tights and comfortable shoes.
And that brings us to the secret of the brand’s success. Young women see themselves in them, of course – but older women, the actual main target group, can also turn to these designs, which appear wearable, rejuvenated and never disguised. In smaller sizes, as on the catwalk, the creations reveal their spirit just as much as in higher fits. Even if the comparison is flawed when it comes to fashion that is made for a rich clientele: Chanel is fundamentally democratic after all.
One must never forget (and how could one) that Chanel’s couture is sartorial filigree at its finest. From the skirt to the button, everything is made by hand. It’s logical that the Bravo shouts for Viard don’t want to stop at the end of the show. She herself appears before the audience, looking grim as always, dressed entirely in black. She’s just doing her job, maybe that’s the message. And others then shine in the glow of this work. Not just on a Chanel day in Paris.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
