Short and sweet or long and slim. The Chanel team that is designing in the interregnum between Virginie Viard and the arrival of Matthieu Blazy kept the spring haute couture collection light, young, and pretty all the way.
And this was nice. For a start, at a time when so much fashion has gone awfully beige (and black and gray), the Chanel studio spritzed us with pastels. The opening look had a jacket with an iridescent hand-painted rainbow of pastels and a short, flippy, box-pleated A-line skirt. Mint green, fondant pink, mauve, coral, and yellow followed. It’s funny how color can act as a psychological fillip in dark times.
Let it be said: The Chanel tweed suit isn’t the easiest canon to work in—it can so easily go lumpy and stodgy. This collection neatly avoided the problem, cutting skirts above the knee and pairing them with cropped jackets, long jackets, and a Coco cardigan jacket lined with emerald green satin. Rarely has the classic Chanel 1960s suit been reinterpreted in a way that actually looks like something a cool young woman would wear.
It was the same with eveningwear. Haute couture, of course, is about extraordinary handwork, embroidery, feather work, and the like. It was all there, extraordinary enough, but not so much that it interfered with the youthful, easy-to-wear attitude of the show. The streamlined silhouettes of a yellow satin full-length shirtdress or a long coat over a slim silver lamé dress were a couple of the best moments in the show.
All that said, this wasn’t the moment to expect a dramatic seasonal theme from the house—that would be tricky anyway—but seeing a relatable, wearable wardrobe set out before you is always enjoyable. The safe and skilled hands on the Rue Cambon—and in the 19M couture materials suppliers—know what Chanel is inside out.
If there was no grand message, no apparent storytelling, it was certainly there built into the set at the Grand Palais. It was constructed like a huge white Mobius band—shaped into a continuous loop that gently swooped up, down, around, and back again. Sitting inside it also made you feel as if you were somehow surrounded by a giant CC logo. As a piece of architecture, it was all calmness and optimism and certainty. Not a switchback ride of uncertainty. It’s Coco forever here—and we all know the next creative director is on his way. Exciting times are just around the bend, possibly sometime at the end of the year.
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