Chanel’s spectacular haute couture show

Published on 26 January 2023. Updated on 29 July 2025.

Gabrielle Chanel’s bestiary as the set of the couture show

If Gabrielle Chanel first became famous for her understated, even minimalist collections, her flat located on Rue Cambon in Paris translated her taste for sumptuous decoration. Among Coromandel screens and ear of wheat table designs by Goossens, Virginie Viard also exhibited a collection of objects, sculptures, and drawings representing deer, birds, camels and lions, her astrological sign. “For his third participation, I asked Xavier Veilhan to reinterpret the bestiary of the flat and to incorporate his own,” she explained. “The whole embroidery universe of the collection looks towards the animal kingdom”. The models came out of the marvellous set made of eleven monumental wood, cardboard, and paper animals imagined by French artist Xavier Vielhan, to unveil the artistic director’s Spring/Summer 2023 couture show for Chanel.

A Chanel show designed as a marvellous parade

As opposed to the Schiaparelli couture collection presented the day before, the house of Chanel nurtures a poetic, dreamlike bestiary. In this splendid parade-show, the tweed suits dear to Gabrielle Chanel merges with the majorette uniform. Pleated skirts, double-breasted or tail jackets, tuxes, sequins, mini shorts, or petticoats – sometimes finely embroidered with animal patterns – are combined with top hats, bow ties, white gloves, and adorable laced boots. Later in the show, the couture collection evoked the first evening wear imagined by Gabrielle Chanel, with light and see-through dresses and jumpsuits. Their apparent simplicity exalts the sophistication of the house’s craftsmanship – silk tulle, taffeta, organza, georgette crepe, and Chantilly lace that are often declined in Chanel’s emblematic black and white colours or painted with floral patterns and playing with superimpositions, flounces, and pleats. A spectacular couture parade that ended with a wedding dress finely embroidered with swallows and loudly applauded by actress Tilda Swinton.

The stars seen at the Chanel Spring/Summer 2023 haute couture show