The chateau’s tapestries inspired intarsia knits and Lesage embroidered evening sweaters. Her own playful trompe l’oeil, developed with the inventive embroidery house of Montex, reimagines the castle in Lego-like sequin bricks, used as cummerbund sashes that cinch the waists of full satin ball skirts worn with fragile organza blouses flourished with some of those Catherine de Medici–via–Coco Chanel ruffled collars. Viard, as she explained, took inspiration from Lagerfeld’s fall 1983 trompe l’oeil “shower” collection for Chloé that featured embroidered faucets and showerheads spouting crystal water sprays. There are capes, poet blouses, ruffled gauntlet gloves, and massaro’s D’Artagnan boots for a bit of 16th-century dress-up swagger, but there are also lavishly beaded tracksuits, or a blossom-scattered denim shirtdress to the floor for milady’s WFH days. So that gallery over the bridge, for instance, inspired the largely black and white Goth princess looks, notably the chess board sequin miniskirts (and matching purses) worn over shiny lycra (or bejeweled stretch velvet) leggings, and an amazing woven tweed ball skirt paired with a black sweater with Renaissance white flower motifs growing up the arms. Viard took the flowers and parterre designs as embroidery motifs, reimagined with what she playfully describes as a touch of Disney.įor the Métiers d’Art collection, Viard wanted to showcase the exceptional workmanship of the 38 various Maison d’Art suppliers that Chanel has acquired through recent years in order to preserve their skills, from pleaters and button makers to milliners and embroiderers (11 of these crafts houses will be consolidated in the brand’s new 19M hub, opening soon in the north of Paris). The chateau is flanked on either side by gardens created by De Poitiers who is said to have maintained her legendary beauty by bathing in the River Cher. The 16th-century Chenonceau is known as the Chateau des Femmes (the Women’s Castle) because of its association with some powerful ladies through its storied history, notably Diane de Poitiers, the influential mistress of King Henry II, and her rival, Catherine de Medici, the king’s Italian-born, taste-making wife. Revisiting Chenonceau earlier this year, however, when the castle was planned as the setting for an in-person Métiers d’Art show (it has subsequently become virtual), Viard was struck by how closely the atmosphere of the place evoked La Pausa, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s own fabled house in Roquebrune in the south of France. At the time, she was more impressed by the splendors of Chambord than the more intimate charm of the fairytale Château de Chenonceau. From the minutest of embroideries to the button-shapes to the big, fuzzy angora pattern on a sweater, and swinging on multiple chain-bags, the flowers were absolutely everywhere.Like many French schoolchildren, Chanel’s creative director Virginie Viard was taken on an educational tour of the storied Chateaux of the Loire. White camellias ran up a black trellis on a long, slim, tweed coat they clustered as a corsage on slick black patent Mod-ish suits and popped up like polka dots all over cardigan jackets. Like so many others this season, she opened with variations on black, white and gray. “I find it reassuring and familiar, I like its softness and its strength.”Ī taste for propagating a contemporary realness around Chanel’s enviable Frenchness is more Viard’s thing. “The camellia is more than a theme, it’s an eternal code of the house,” she said in her press release. Viard had organized a giant symbolic white camellia as a set, and had a real one placed on every guest’s seat, but she wasn’t pressing the anniversary angle. Was a consciousness of centenary of the Chanel camellia in the back of Virginie Viard’s mind when she picked it as the center-piece of her fall ready-to-wear show? She first pinned one of the blooms on a dress in 1923. Perhaps that’s one reason that Coco Chanel cultivated them as one of the signifiers of her house. The camellias are out in Paris-ever the first optimistic sign of spring, despite this week’s frigid weather.
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