“Virginie Viard did not leave because there was someone else waiting in the waiting room”

On the night of June 5 to 6, social networks went crazy. And for good reason, Chanel had just announced the departure of its artistic director Virginie Viard. To everyone’s surprise, the one who succeeded Karl Lagerfeld in 2019 leaves her post. Known for her legendary reserve, this brunette, as chic as she is discreet, leaves without explanation and will probably not give interviews, she who spoke so little and only to a handful of journalists. Including Loïc Prigent, who is undoubtedly one of those who worked with her the most during all her years at Chanel. The tireless decipherer of fashion, who is also the one who has most documented the label with its 2 intertwined Cs, reveals to us (a little) the personality of this French designer who worked for more than thirty years on a whole section of the story of Chanel.

Madame Figaro.- Did the departure of Virginie Viard from the artistic direction of Chanel surprise you like everyone else?
Loïc Prigent.- Yes, nothing suggested his departure. Personally, I only learned of this shattering news this morning. It’s a real earthquake of a very high degree on the Richter scale of fashion. Chanel is the epicenter of the sector and this news will undoubtedly fuel all the discussions of the day in the fashion sphere around the world today with the vain speculations that go with it. It’s the end of an era for the house. Virginie Viard arrived in the house in 1987 in the embroidery division before becoming director of the creative studio in 2000. Alongside Karl Lagerfeld, she was the nerve and creative center of fashion at Chanel.

Names are circulating to succeed him, Pierpaolo Piccioli (formerly Valentino), Sarah Burton (formerly Alexander McQueen), Hedi Slimane (Celine) among others… What do you think?
I read all these names and frankly I don’t see any that seem obvious to me. I definitely don’t want to speculate. But one thing is certain, Virginie Viard did not leave because there was someone else waiting in the waiting room.

What was there in her that was deeply Chanel?
She knows Chanel like the back of her hand. It’s his fingerprint. She touches a tweed, she grasps the slightest thread, she can recite the archives of the Lesage house by heart, box by box, like children who collect Panini stickers from a football club. She has a prodigious memory as if she had real Chanel software inside her, especially when it comes to crafts.

Do you remember your first meeting with Virginie Viard?
It was in 2004, when I was preparing my documentary Signed Chanel. It was she who introduced me to all the great masters of art houses, François Lesage, Monsieur Massaro… As well as the legendary trimmer, Madame Pouzieux and all the key people of Chanel haute couture. What surprised me during filming was that I never saw her take notes, it was all in her head. It was impressive, especially considering the number of drawings Karl Lagerfeld gave him. She was a true conductor who managed the scores perfectly. Everything was always very fluid with her, never one word above the other, no authoritarianism on her part. I never witnessed any clashes or giant tantrums like in some other houses. There at Chanel with her, it was rather luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

Unlike Karl Lagerfeld who was an interview bullfighter, Virginie Viard avoided journalists’ microphones…
Yes, she spoke to very few journalists, for a long time there were no more than three to four. Unlike Gabrielle Chanel who was described as a little bull by Colette, or Karl Lagerfeld whose barbs were verbose, Virginie Viard is unusually discreet. And it wasn’t a posture. I sometimes managed to film two sentences from her. But I find that the Chanel house was exemplary, and very cool, in letting her take the reins without pushing or forcing her to step into the light. The first portrait of her in the Vogue American only arrived three years after her appointment as artistic director, we see her in a photo accompanied by her son who had paraded at the Singapore cruise collection in 2010…

You who followed her with your camera on each fashion show, can you tell us a little more about her personality?
During her rare interviews, she always gave very personal references to her Chanel collections. In her cinematic pantheon, for example, the New Wave with Anna Karina often comes up. She also quoted Stella Tennant and Romy Schneider a lot. And then, she often talked about the sunsets over the rooftops of Paris that she often watched from the studios on rue Cambon. The number of pink, red, orange in her Chanel collections is incredible. She also loved the starry sky at night and the reflections of the moon on the water, allusions that can be found on many Chanel handbags with bluish-black embroidery. Virginie Viard was a very poetic person. I remember her giving the workshops very inspired collages with, for example, a bird, an image of Romy Schneider in a Visconti film, and a sketch.

Did she have the same sense of humor as Karl Lagerfeld?
Yes, and above all she liked to surprise. Like during his Chanel show in Los Angeles which makes very funny references to Barbie, or that of the Métiers d’art collection in Manchester which gives an ironic, without being cynical, vision of England. Chanel’s spring-summer 2022 fashion show, with Inez & Vinoodh who photographed the models parading on a raised catwalk, in an atmosphere inspired by shows from the 1980s, was also offbeat and joyful. Virginie Viard was less biting than Karl Lagerfeld but she liked to take side steps, peppering the collections with fun details. And she has a very rock spirit that she takes from Gabrielle Chanel and undoubtedly from her night owl years. We feel it in the Chanel fall-winter 2021-2022 fashion show, filmed and presented digitally during the Covid period. We saw girls coming out of Castel with their glittery outfits under their sublime coats in the spirit of those you take off and put in the locker room of a chic club.

Karl Lagerfeld said of her that she was his right arm and his left arm… How did they work together?
Above all, I had the impression that she was like a gold prospector’s first sieve. The filters were her. But she was also at his service, without conditions. I have never seen such dedication. She protected him, defended him and always got what he wanted. The sketches he gave to Virginie Viard were executed to the millimeter. She was his square, his compass… And he knew it, he gave her his estate and all the keys. But it wasn’t a coincidence, it really was his place.

Did she succeed in renewing Chanel’s statement when she succeeded Karl Lagerfeld in 2019?
She was quoting Karl Lagerfeld, that was obvious, but she also had fun evoking periods in Gabrielle Chanel’s life in her fashion shows that Karl Lagerfeld had never and probably would never have revisited, like the Aubazine Abbey. in Corrèze. There was also the period of the 2010s and 2020s, like the outfits that Coco wore at the Longchamp races for example, and all the iconography linked to the latter’s links with Cocteau… It was new, as references, and perhaps this is how she emancipated herself from Karl. She has chosen to look elsewhere and this is also evident in the destinations of the cities chosen for cruises. Dakar and Manchester, for example, it was really a nice surprise.

Thirty years of career in the same company is rare. What was his secret?
What always fascinated me about her was that she perfectly knew the personalities of everyone she spoke to at Chanel and she was able to give a different brief to each one. She doesn’t speak much, but she has always known how to say the right word to her collaborators, the one that will ignite the appropriate spark, push them in their capacity to give everything and guide them in their creative poetry. She did it in a mischievous, subtle, joyful way. And that’s a real talent. Virginie Viard also told incredible stories about Chanel tweeds. I particularly remember his first show, after the death of Karl Lagerfeld. She explained to me the story of an impressionist tweed that she had used on her looks, and which evoked a train journey from Paris to Giverny: there was the white cotton thread which symbolized the steam of the locomotive, the black sequins which represented the wheels, and the lines of different greens which summoned nature which parades at high speed through the window. This whole narrative path was incredible.