The birdcage on the Chanel catwalk was empty, its door swung open. A metaphor for a house that is without a designer after Virginie Viard’s recent departure – the bird has flown – and a Chanel Easter egg, a wink to a teenage Vanessa Paradis swinging in a birdcage in a 1991 advertisement for Coco fragrance that was itself a reference to the birds Coco herself kept in her Paris home.
This birdcage was scaled for a golden eagle, almost reaching the 45-metre ceiling height of the Grand Palais – appropriate for a brand that has grown from Coco’s apartment to become a $20bn (£15bn) business.
At the Grand Palais, an ornate landmark in central Paris, the front door has been renamed the Gabrielle Chanel entrance, Chanel having footed the €25m bill for renovation in time for its reopening as a fencing and taekwondo venue at this year’s Olympics.
“Our relationship with the Grand Palais is part of our legend,” Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, said before the show. “These things have to do with status, if I may say so.”
Pavlovsky declined to give a timeframe for the appointment of “the next artistic leader”, confirming that the studio team who created the current collection were already working on looks for shows in December and January.
Under Karl Lagerfeld, the Grand Palais was transformed for shows into a space rocket launch pad, a supermarket, a beach, or a cruise ship. Chanel’s next designer has big shoes to fill. “We are not in a hurry. This is not about finding a designer who will be here for two years, it is finding the right person who can embrace the huge scale of Chanel, and lead a new vision in the long term. There are lots of designers moving from one brand to another at the moment, and we are part of that, by definition.”
Names in the hat, according to the fashion week rumour mill, may include designers Hedi Slimane, Pieter Mulier, Simon Porte Jacquemus, John Galliano and Marc Jacobs – even the film director Sofia Coppola.
“Some designers love disruption, but at Chanel we love loyalty and continuity. Gabrielle Chanel installed the best codes, and Karl was the best at modernising them, and Virginie continued in the same direction. Chanel is bigger than any designer, and Chanel stays Chanel,” was Pavlovsky’s only comment, hinting that some of the more fiery names could be out of contention.
Placeholder collections without anyone to take a bow tend to feel underpowered, especially when the catwalk dwarfs a football pitch, but the design team brought youthful enthusiasm to their brief of doubling down on house codes.
The boucle tweed suits came with as many shorts as skirts, and in Clueless-era pastels. Models had their hair twisted into easy buns, and walked with sunglasses on their heads, swinging cute birdcage mini-bags or with quilted rucksacks on their backs. A stronger authorial voice might have edited out the chiffon capes worn over denim, and toned down the two-toned lace-up metallic brogues with sky-high platforms, but here all eyes were on what happens next.
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“The Olympics has helped all of Paris to see the future of this city with a new perspective,” said Pavlovsky. “The world saw the best of the best of Paris. Everyone was so happy.”
Chanel’s next major catwalk collection will be December’s Metiers d’Art show, a celebration of craft in Hangzhou, the historic centre of Chinese silk production. “A lot of people are asking why we are going to Hangzhou, because there is a lot of talk of the slowdown in China. But we have very important clients in China and when we travel, we want to be respectful of the culture. Hangzhou is very much traditional China, so it is the right place to animate and deepen our relationship with Chinese clients,” Pavlovsky said.
