Chanel: a haute couture trip to the Paris opera

Coco Chanel loved opera – and ballet in particular, an art that she would support throughout her life. Also, the location of this haute couture show would undoubtedly have delighted Mademoiselle, who would have found here a certain idea of ​​the opulence specific to Chanel, against a backdrop of polychrome marble, gilding and busts of artists observing, with their motionless eyes, the ballet of guests, clients and celebrities present. Naomi Campbell, Nile Rodgers, Kerry Washington, Michelle Williams are all there, a way of saying that if Chanel today claims its Parisian identity, the house speaks first and foremost to the whole world. One absence, obviously, hangs over the event: that of Virginie Viard, the artistic director whose departure was announced to everyone’s surprise one evening at the beginning of June. An earthquake in the history of rue Cambon, which did not fail to trigger the most crazy speculations about the succession to the most coveted position in the fashion industry, but also about this first show without an artistic director since decades at Chanel. According to the established formula, the work is “that of the studio”, and, in the press release sent after the show, the house salutes the work of the six workshops and the 150 craftsmen working on the floors of rue Cambon.

Return to decor

What should we remember from this trip to the Opera, which can be explained as much by the impossibility, due to the Olympic Games, of using the Grand Palais, as by Chanel’s links with the institution of which she is a great patron ? First lesson: even without a conductor, the show is there. Starting with the decor, which gives the collection a fantastical height, whether it be the models or the clients whose looks give the measure, and even the excess, of the collective fantasy that Chanel represents. Going to the Opera – the invitation was accompanied by a pair of binoculars in gold metal and black lacquer – is to put Chanel in the heart of the biotope that is most dear to her: a certain idea of ​​spectacle. We won’t blame the house for having, like all its competitors, preferred stripped-down facilities since the end of the Covid episode for reasons of eco-responsibility.

The grandiose and ephemeral decors of the Karl Lagerfeld era would undoubtedly be impossible today, eco-responsibility requires, but banking on the polychrome marbles, the gilding, the monumental staircase of the Palais Garnier, the most legendary opera house in the world hits the mark, just like the scenography by filmmaker Christophe Honoré. The red lacquered ceilings, the (real) armchairs in the room, arranged in the passageways, the soundtrack: everything contributes, between shadow and light, to this imagination of Chanel couture where in the evening, art, know-how do and the promises of the night vibrate in unison. An image comes to mind: that of Gabrielle Chanel, in a long black evening dress whose embroidery sparkles in front of the lens. Chanel, of course, is the liberated look, it’s the taste for the outdoors, jersey and English tweed, but Chanel is that magic too, which works perfectly on this summer day which promises to be hot.

The art of escape