26 jan 2023

The spectacular parade at the Chanel couture show

In a set made of giant animals designed by Xavier Veilhan, Virginie Viard turns her Chanel Couture Spring/Summer 2023 show into a magical parade with a collection that highlights Gabrielle Chanel’s bestiary on embroidered tweed ensembles.

By Léa Zetlaoui.

Chanel haute couture Spring-Summer 2023 show

Gabrielle Chanel’s bestiary as the inspiration for the set of this couture show

If Gabrielle Chanel first became famous for her sober, even refined fashion 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 lions – her astrological sign – deer, birds, and camels. “For his third participation, I asked Xavier Veilhan to reinterpret the bestiary of the flat and to incorporate his own,” she explained, before adding that “the whole embroidery universe of the collection looks towards the animal kingdom”. The models came out of the marvelous 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.

Chanel’s spectacular parade

As opposed to the Schiaparelli couture collection presented the day before, Chanel grew a poetic and dreamlike bestiary. The marvelous parade-show featured the tweed suits dear to Gabrielle Chanel merging with the majorette uniform. Pleated skirts, double-breasted or tail jackets, tuxes, sequins, mini shorts, or petticoats – sometimes finely embroidered with animals – are combined with top hats, bow ties, white gloves, and adorable laced boots. Later in the show, the couture collection evoked the first eveningwear imagined by Gabrielle Chanel, with light and see-through dresses and jumpsuits. Their apparent simplicity exalts the sophistication of the house’s know-how – silk tulle, taffeta, organza, georgette crepe, and Chantilly lace that are often declined in Chanel’s emblematic black and white colors 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.