Chanel Dives Into Founder's Orphanage Past in Couture Show
A humble stone fountain, overgrown scrubs and flowers and white sheets drying on a line met Chanel's curious guests, including Pharrell Williams, on Tuesday inside the Grand Palais in Paris.
The set was a recreation of the childhood landscape of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, the late fashion house's founder, whose father sent her to an orphanage in an abbey as a girl after her mother died.
If such a lowly — and sad — setting seemed like an unusual choice to showcase high-priced and normally joyous haute couture, it was an intentional move by designer Virginie Viard to demonstrate how Chanel mixed high and low in her fashion.
Chanel, Viard discovered, had been profoundly inspired in all her designs by the ancient Cistercian abbey of Aubazine, in the French region of Corr�ze — with its flowers, uniforms and stained-glass artistry.
The theme made for a more haunting collection than normal — a mood emphasized by loud, spooky music and models that slowly crisscrossed the courtyard like they were in a trance.
A take on a convent schoolgirl uniform opened the show as a signature Chanel tweed skirt-suit. It was cut sharply, with a round ecclesiastical white collar and baggy white preppy ankle socks. Mosaic patterns in panels evoking stained glass appeared on an equally strict jacket in pastel blue and sand. Apart from the occasional flash of color, most of the designs came in black and white.
"What interested me in this (abbey) was the paradox between the sophistication of haute couture and the simplicity of this place," Viard said. "The strict suits of the pupils rub shoulders with structured dresses of an ethereal finesse."
Viard has a stricter aesthetic take than the flamboyant Karl Lagerfeld, her predecessor who died last year. And this more austere theme gave the talented French designer a platform to design more naturally with her own voice.