Lightness, prettiness, and girly frivolity—Virginie Viard gathered up all these values and presented them as the Chanel spring haute couture show. Although she’s never one to follow a theme to the letter, Viard’s background idea was ballet, threading it through a leggy collection that circled around a giant installation of a Chanel button.
The show began with an obvious curtsy to Gabrielle Chanel in the chiffon Pierrot ruff worn by Margaret Qualley over a cream tweed jacket, a tiny pelmet skirt overlaid by a longer white tulle skirt, and thick white tights. (The actress had starred in the season’s teaser film—a mini fantasy about a missing Chanel button made in collaboration with Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free—that had just been projected in the space.)
The collection ran from white to fondant pastels and back again. By look 3, the connection to dance was flickering through the silhouette of a tweed twinset of sorts—a cropped jacket whose matching under-piece was shaped like a leotard. If you hadn’t cottoned onto the dancer idea yet, the confirmation fully arrived with one of the show’s highlights: a nipped-waist, full-skirted black coat-dress puffed out on a stiff white ballerina tutu.
What clients of the house look for in its super-luxurious haute couture is the ineffable wonder of handwork. Craning forward, you could see some outstanding techniques: a cropped-jacket beige suit that appeared to mimic open-weave tweed made of something that may have been raffia embroidery; a pink chiffon dress with a shirred bodice and some flyaway, textile-arty bows mixed up in its skirts.
The finale, of course, was the Chanel bride. She had on a tiny silver-white tunic for a dress with poetic balloon chiffon sleeves and was trailing yards of white tulle as a train. Romantic, decorative, but grounded in a kind of contemporary reality. That’s Virginie Viard’s style all over.
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