Chanel was back in the Grand Palais for the first time in four years. The sun poured in through its freshly renovated glass roof, and gave the embroidered tweeds of the many clients in attendance added sparkle. They were in their happy place, taking selfies and complimenting each other’s looks, apparently unbothered by the empty creative director’s seat that has been the subject of so much speculation amongst industry insiders since the shows began a month ago in New York.
Front row discussions have focused on not just who should get the job, but what kind of talent they should be: A marketing genius? A creative guru? And wouldn’t it feel right and true if it were a woman? Everyone has an opinion, including Hedi Slimane, who dropped a surprise Celine collection online over the weekend with distinctive Coco leanings.
For spring, Chanel’s creative studio took the Grand Palais itself as a starting point. The show’s most remarkable pieces were hand knit in the pattern of its soaring Art Deco iron and steel work. Lightness, airiness, and a whisper of ephemerality were the directives for the collection, which the studio team achieved in various ways: skirts with front slits that proffered glimpses of leg, collars made from layers of downy feathers, trailing chiffon capes, and platform shoes that added a feeling of youthfulness to the proceedings.
An enormous bird cage stood at the center of the Palais, a callback to a Jean Paul Goude-directed, Vanessa Paradis-starring Chanel commercial circa 1991. The models crisscrossed the cage as they made their way back and forth around the nave, and the vast distances they walked were a visual reminder of the house’s long history. The creative team had ideas about how to keep its proprietary tweeds looking fresh: by using candy pastels or swapping the famous skirt suit for a shorts suit. There were surprises, too, like a black denim jacket and jeans, both embellished with shiny black sequins which caught the casual way that the young women working at the “accessorization” in the atelier a couple of days before the show make Chanel everyday and their own.
The evening looks were created in a similarly playful spirit, mixing embellished denim and a feather-dusted baby blue cape, or adding a chiffon train to a sparkly tweed jumpsuit. Riley Keough wore something along those lines when she sang Prince’s “When Doves Cry” perched from a swing inside the birdcage at the finale. The dove is paused mid-flight, and the whole industry is watching to see which way it takes off again.
