In times like this, quarantine and all, I gravitate towards something beautiful, yet profound and calm. Virginie Viard‘s phenomenal spring-summer 2020 haute couture collection for Chanel – inspired by the convent of Aubazine, where Coco Chanel was raised – is an example. For this (another) laid-back Friday evening, I highly recommend you the A to Z video by Loic Prigent which is dedicated to this impressive collection.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Many critics are really tough on Virginie Viard. Ok, sometimes some of the styling sucks. There’s too much of CC logo on her designs. But then, I can’t remember the time when the Chanel woman felt so liberated. Viard creates intimate, personal fashion for a brand with a format this big that sometimes her vision gets trapped or misunderstood. However, her autumn-winter 2020 collection was her most confident outing yet. “Freedom!” declared the designer backstage. Viard explained that she was talking about the sort of wind-in-the-hair freedom that a horse rider feels as their steed bounds through the landscape. That idea of liberation translated into a collection of unforced, woman-friendly pieces that embraced the house codes at the same time that they reinforced Viard’s own pragmatic instincts for comfortable, no-nonsense glamour. Viard took her inspiration from a 1980s photograph of Karl Lagerfeld and his sometime muse Anna Piaggi, both dressed in the height of Edwardian-revival finery. In that image, Piaggi is shrouded in a veiled Death in Venice hat, and Lagerfeld wears a morning-dress-stripe jacket and vest, a floppy black silk cravat, jodhpurs, and a pair of sturdy riding boots – an image that for Viard represents “strong romance.” Viard reinterpreted Lagerfeld’s chunky-heel boot and styled it with every single outfit in the collection, from a thickly knit cardigan worn with a cropped white cotton evening dickey and micro shorts to liquid black velvet evening gowns. The collection didn’t have 100+ looks (which was a big relief), the setting was minimal, and it all felt consistent, yet easy. Some girls came out in pairs or groups of three, and it was refreshing to see them smiling and chatting to each other like friends, wearing unpretentious clothes that seemed to have stepped right out of their wardrobes to make sense for modern lives.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
I realised one thing about Virginie Viard‘s Chanel. You just can’t go through her collections and instantly have a feeling about it. If you do, you will rather consider it as boring. But when you take a longer moment for each of the looks, you see what’s so special about Viard’s vision for the brand. It’s light, sober, slow, elavating. Virginie Viard’ spring-summer 2020 haute couture presentation was set in a romantically overgrown garden of a cloister, set miraculously in Paris’ Grand Palais. The setting suggested a key element in Coco Chanel’s legendary story. She was 11 years old when her mother died, and as her father was often away, it was decided that she would be sent to the convent of Aubazine in the remote French region of Corrèze. Here, her unusual situation meant that she was among the girls singled out to wear an austere black-and-white uniform, one that she would adapt through the years to dress the richest and most stylish women of her age. In imaginative retellings of her autobiography, Chanel would refer to the convent’s strict and unforgiving nuns as “aunts.” These women taught the young Chanel to sew and gave her the tools to forge a life as an independent woman for herself in later years. The aesthetic of the convent stayed with Chanel forever. Fully aware of the biographical significance of the convent in Chanel’s life, and to her aesthetic, Virginie Viard made a pilgrimage to Corrèze on a gloriously sunny day last September. “Karl didn’t like those things,” Viard explained backstage. “He always said, ‘Oh, it’s ugly, ugly!’ But I said to myself, I must do this.” The visit proved inspirational; “I loved it,” Viard recalled, “it was full of charm.” In fact, she was so moved by the cloister’s garden that she immediately decided to recreate it for the evocative decor of the haute couture set in the Grand Palais, creating an enclosure of dozens of antique linen sheets hung up as though freshly laundered by the girls and the nuns to dry in the breeze. The influence of those convent girls and their childhood home threaded through Viard’s collection in subtle ways that showcased the incredible resources of the haute couture. The designer developed a soft, pastel woven-and-sequined fabric to evoke the chapel’s stained-glass windows. The convent’s unique stone floors, with their rough pebbles laid in a grid that resembled quilting, were evoked in trellises of embroidery tracing the shape of the Peter Pan collars. One particularly beautiful example, on a suit jacket of marled stone-colored tweed, turned out in the hand to have been worked with “sequins” cut from chiffon. Many of the skirts, for instance, were paired with exquisite overskirts in filmy tulle that added extra length, but garlanded the lower leg in exquisitely embroidered fragile dandelion clocks, or scattered meadow flowers, or butterflies made from feathers. Add to all this black patent schoolgirl shoes with white ankle socks. Beautiful.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Virginie Viard takes Chanel to its (at times clichée) codes. Viard titled her Métiers d’Art show “Paris 31 rue Cambon” for the street where Coco Chanel first set up shop as a milliner in 1910 (“Chanel Modes” at Number 21), and where she later expanded her fashion empire to embrace six additional 18th-century buildings, with her legendary haute couture salons at Number 31. The guests sat inside of Coco’s legendary apartment, XXL-scaled and set up in Grand Palais (there was even the famous mirrored staircase). “I adore the apartment,” Viard said backstage, and she evidently found inspiration in this setting where Chanel retreated from the running of her house and entertained friends. The designer described the collection as “the things we like, a mix of Karl and Chanel—the codes.” Of course, comparing to Lagerfeld’s globe-trotting Méters d’Art fairy-tales – think Moscow, Edinburgh, Texas, the Met in New York – seeing Viard show in Paris felt quite unamusing. Nevertheless, the collection was properly Chanel – elegant, refined, refreshingly minimal, yet far from modesty. The pre-fall collections of Chanel showcase the incredible work of the luxury suppliers of the fashion industry – embroiderers, feather and artificial flower makers, milliners, custom shoemakers – many of which Chanel has acquired to keep them operational and the skills alive. Viard, who directed the Chanel studio under Lagerfeld for decades, has a fine appreciation of what these ateliers are capable of. A bolero jacket with broad feathers overprinted with a shadowy pattern of Chanel’s iconic camellias; a feather blazer worked into a subtle trompe l’oeil plaid; eveningwear kept in the most gorgeous, sorbet ombré colour palette… delightful. Viard proves once again that her Chanel takes a slower approach, one that cherishes the timeless classics and the artisan work. Less Instagram moments, more beauty in the details.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
The first model who opened Chanel‘s spring-summer 2020 show, Maike Inga, looked like Jean Seberg from Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless film with her blond pixie-cut and long-sleeved, red tweed dress. Other models had their hair undone and seemed to be make-up free. The collection’s faux setting – a stereotypically Parisian rooftop landscape with dove grey sky in the background – added up to the mood of French New Wave (‘La Nouvelle Vague’) mood. Virginie Viard‘s first ready-to-wear collection for the brand feels like a Parisian postcard, but comparing to Karl Lagerfeld’s emphasis on creating memorable moments, it’s much more low-key. There’s something comforting about her take on Chanel: it’s simple, not show-y and far from any sorts of excess. At some point, the line-up made you yawn with its monotony – too many nearly identical tweed mini-dresses and Chanel logo prints. The eveningwear lacks spark and excitement as well. My favourite look was the most casual one: a breton stripe top, a matching jacket, high-rise denim pants and flats. Very Chanel. But I wonder whether Viard’s easy, approachable and at times flat vision for Chanel will do.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Design & Culture by Ed 