Chanel haute couture show is a postcard from idealised Paris | Chanel

Chanel’s high fashion present befell in a completely completely different Paris from town that has been within the headlines this week.

The setting for the present was picture-postcard Paris – actually. The catwalk was a cobblestoned stretch of the Seine quayside, swept and groomed for the event.

Sketches of the actor and model ambassador Vanessa Paradis had been slotted among the many memento road indicators, within the racks of vacationer postcards. Biographies of Coco Chanel nestled between charmingly wobbly however suspiciously colour-coordinated stacks of Gallimard paperbacks by Albert Camus and Émile Zola.

The solar shone obligingly and the river sparkled. This was a Paris each bit as serene and blithe because the Fifties Hollywood imaginative and prescient of Humorous Face, when Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire faucet danced on the deck of the Eiffel Tower.

The charmed temper was in stark distinction to the ugly scenes which have taken place in Paris and throughout France because the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel M every week in the past.

However French excessive vogue has lengthy traded on the forex of an idealised, imaginary Paris, moderately than the actual metropolis. One French visitor famous that being on the present after the nervousness of latest occasions reminded her of a pattern throughout the pandemic lockdown for city-dwellers shut indoors to rewatch basic movies set in Paris.

“This time we’re in Paris itself, on the quayside,” mentioned the designer Virginie Viard of her newest assortment. “The road and the colorful paving stones name for each sophistication and ease.” Occasions of the previous week however, there’s a sense of on a regular basis life within the model that Viard has dropped at Chanel since taking the reins from her theatrical predecessor, Karl Lagerfeld. Viard, who joined Chanel as an embroidery trainee aged 25, is a 61-year-old who has been a residing, respiration stylish Parisian for her complete grownup life, and it exhibits on her catwalk.

On the quayside, fashions carried baskets of flowers as an alternative of £1,000 purses. One walked her (impeccably groomed) canine. Many fashions wore their hair within the informal, looped off-duty-ballerinas model a lot in proof on the Métro.

Casting at Chanel has grow to be extra inclusive since Viard’s arrival, though there may be nonetheless a technique to go. This present was opened by the 48-year-old music producer and mannequin Caroline de Maigret, in a easy lengthy black coat, sporting low-heeled footwear applicable for strolling on uneven cobblestones and smiling on the viewers. The final look within the assortment, previous the bride, was a black taffeta night robe with matching cape, worn by the Indigenous activist and mannequin Quannah Chasinghorse.

The bride, conventional finale of the high fashion exhibits, strolled the quayside together with her fingers within the pockets of her knee-length, long-sleeved ivory day gown. Jill Kortleve, who as a UK measurement 12 is amongst a brand new wave of “mid-sized” fashions and has grow to be a daily on the Chanel catwalk since 2020, when she grew to become the primary mannequin above a measurement 8 to be solid in a decade, wore a unfastened coat-dress and low-heeled Mary Jane footwear.

Chanel will always feel the need for tweed. Here, it came in pyjama-style shirt and trouser coords as well as skirt suits, as sleeveless waistcoats layered over blouses, and as formal jackets. There were some fanciful styling touches – a straw boater felt a stretch, even on a quayside – but hemlines were mostly a very sensible knee length, while shoes had chunky 2in block heels.

“Playing with opposites and contrasts, with nonchalance and elegance, is like standing on a line between strength and delicacy, which at Chanel is what we call allure,” said Viard.