Chanel

“It’s a summer collection, so it’s very fresh, even with a lot of embroideries,” explained Chanel’s artistic director Virginie Viard during a fitting in the Chanel studios on the eve of the showing of her thistledown-light haute couture collection. “I was inspired by the ’20s a little—the feathers, the fringe,” Viard continued, “the feminine side of the Constructivists, the girl inside!”

To set the scene, Viard reached out to the artist Xavier Veilhan whom she met at the home of their mutual friend, musician Sébastien Tellier. “I always wanted to work with him because he did something for Chanel [fine] jewelry 15 years ago in Place Vendome, a great installation,” Viard said. “I love his work and I needed someone to work with for the sets—the way Karl did. Me, I can’t do that! He loves Constructivism, that kind of thing which is so Karl!” she continued. “In fact, I found some notes from Karl in Rodchenko and Malevich books that he always gave me—so many books and documents with notes on details that could be used for embroidery and so on. It was always Constructivist with Karl!”

Veilhan, who was chosen to represent France in the 2017 Venice Biennale (for which he created, as he explained at the time, “an immersive installation that propels visitors to the world of the recording studio…inspired by the pioneering work of Kurt Schwitters, the Merzbau”), drew on this century-old, but still revolutionary period in art, for his Chanel set, with its giant spinning discs and sandy walkways, crafted from sustainable plywood and matting in his preferred (and appropriately Chanel) palette of black, white, and beige.

Veilhan was “curious” about the commission, as he explained before the show, because “the invitation was very broad—[Virginie] wanted me to make something, but she didn’t want to tell me what. It could be a photograph, it could be a book, it could be something involving music—because in my work there is a lot of relation with architecture and music. She said, ‘I just want you to make something, but over two seasons.’ I think that in fashion there is always this idea of a relationship with history but also of always renewing constantly. As an artist I felt I could provide another relation to time.” The set he created springs from this thought, inspired by 1920s Wold Fairs and artists like Sonia and Robert Delaunay. (The makeup was inspired by the pre-war era’s avant garde creatives too, although the dark circles around some of the models’ eyes looked more pugilistic than artistic).

“I like the classic Chanel,” added Veilhan, “and I like sport and it’s funny to think that the Chanel tailleur is something you can wear for playing golf, or riding a horse.” To prove his point, the show opened with Monaco’s Princess Charlotte, dressed in a Chanel jacket, riding the beautiful eight year old Spanish bay horse Kuskus (that would explain the sand runway), first in an elegant “collected walk,” then a canter. Sure enough, the jacket’s form was working as perfectly as Kuskus.

Viard’s new take on the summer tweed Chanel suit features a skirt that doesn’t quite wrap around and reveals a lace or jagged feather dress underneath. Meanwhile there will be no need to remove layers against the heat in her pant suits—the trouser legs are split at the side from mid-calf to upper thigh. That ’20s and ’30s Gatsby mood that Viard discussed in the preview was made manifest in filmy chiffon and organza dresses with uneven hems (high in the front, low in the back), and trailing scarf panels that drifted from the shoulder—a Coco Chanel device of the period. Slithering satin evening dresses seemed to be suspended from necklaces and were draped to reveal the back, and tiny beaded gilets could be slipped on to amplify the glamour quotient.

This is not the moment for an intimate salon presentation of course, but the overwhelming space of the temporary structure that is standing in for the Grand Palais (while that building undergoes a dramatic renovation), meant that many of the details were lost at the socially enforced distance. This is a sadness, as backstage and in the hand those details are simply miraculous tributes to the craft of the Chanel ateliers and the amazing artisans who create the jewel-like buttons, the handwoven tweeds, the embroideries, and the feathers and fabric flowers. A filmy black organza evening skirt was hand-painted with hot pink and mauve camellias, dew-dropped with sequins, and orbited with wreaths of fine silver thread and seed pearls, for instance (it fluttered beneath an hourglass raspberry tweed jacket). Elsewhere, there was a flapper fringe of lilac ostrich and silk tendrils, individually attached, and frosted with crystal beads; and a bubble skirted evening dress made from circles of laboriously assembled pieces of different densities of net and tulle and dotted with jet beads—an effect that was indubitably Cubist, suggesting that although Veilhan hadn’t seen a single garment before he took his seat at the show, he and Viard were perfectly aligned.