CHANEL Spring 2021 Collection presented at Grand Palais
+35 CHANEL Spring 2021 Collection presented at Grand Palais
The Chanel show set, in Paris’s soaring Grand Palais, spelled the brand’s name in giant letters, evoking the iconic Hollywood sign in the Santa Monica mountains.
Did this suggest that creative director Virginie Viard was thinking of the movies? “Less movies than actresses,” Viard explained, and particularly the modern life of actresses, from the high production values of the red carpet, to a staged off-duty look whilst getting a Starbucks in the certain knowledge that a paparazzo might be lurking in the parking lot, “the whole process!”
Meanwhile, the accompanying movie teasers, produced by Inez and Vinoodh, literally brought Paris to Tinseltown, with the Sacre Coeur nestled proudly in those Hollywood Hills—symbolic of Viard’s marriage of Parisian cool with laid-back, #WFH L.A. style.
The house of Chanel of course has a century-old relationship with actresses, as the recently opened exhibition “Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto” at Paris’s dedicated fashion museum the Palais Galliera (intelligently curated by Miren Arzalluz) revealed. The exhibition subtly integrates a number of Chanel garments worn in private life and on-screen by some of the 20th century’s fabled actresses—including Grace Kelly, Delphine Seyrig, and Jeanne Moreau—as well as the voice of Marilyn Monroe, who when asked what she wore in bed famously answered “Chanel No. 5.”
