Designers come and go, but the Chanel tweed suit is for ever. That was the message from a show marking the 110th anniversary of haute couture at Chanel. The house is in the middle of more than a year of catwalk shows without a designer to take a bow – Virginie Viard made her final appearance last May, and her successor, Matthieu Blazy, will not make his first until October – so it is working overtime to keep the Chanel name in lights.
The catwalk was formed of two broad curving walkways, which together formed the double C that is instantly recognisable as Chanel. But instead of sitting back to back, as in the logo, the two walkways were teased apart into bridges curving up and over each other, interlinking to form a figure of eight in the shape of the infinity symbol.
It was an elegant visual allegory for a business strategy that is focused on maintaining sales and profile during an extended interregnum. Conceived by the scenographer Willo Perron, the designer of Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour and of the floating stage for Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl half-time show, the catwalk was installed in the giant wrought-iron nave of the Grand Palais – itself a statement of Chanel’s status in French culture.
The headline look of this collection – a short, cute, Cher-in-Clueless take on the skirt suit – was beamed around the world on social media before the first model stepped on the runway.
Kylie Jenner arrived at the Grand Palais in a creamy tweed suit accessorised with oversized black sunglasses and a cross-body bag, Gen Z-coded belly and ankle chains, and several inches of bronzed abs between the cropped, braid-trimmed jacket and its matching box-pleat skirt.
The first outfits on the runway followed Jenner’s lead: tiny skirt suits in white, then cream, then sorbet pastels, worn with bare legs and easy slingbacks. Hair was loose or in slicked-back buns, and each model wore a red lip picked to suit their skin tone.
Crystal rock buttons and slender black velvet belts added punctuation. The technical sophistication of the haute couture ateliers was showcased in lace embroidered for a trompe l’oeil tweed effect, and tiered chiffon gowns of gravity-defying lightness. Several of the low-riding skirts came with satin blouses attached, for those clients who prefer not to flash bare skin under a cropped jacket.
The youthful spin on Chanel chimed with Taylor Swift’s recent choice of a short Chanel tweed playsuit, worn for an NFL game in Kansas last week. The actor Mikey Madison, who is being wooed by major fashion houses as she prepares to appear as a nominee at the Oscars in March, chose a short white Chanel tweed suit for the Toronto film festival’s red carpet in October.
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Blazy, whose appointment was announced in December, is only the fourth designer to have held the creative director post at Chanel, after Coco herself, Karl Lagerfeld, and Viard.
He will take up the role in the next few months, but due to the long lead times of large brands, will not show his first Chanel collection until October. The current collection was created by the in-house team, who will also design the main ready-to-wear show during Paris fashion week in March, a show scheduled for the shores of Lake Como in May, and another haute couture show in July.
