It was the day before the show in May 2014 that I landed in Dubai for the first time – on the same flight as my friends from Sam McKnight’s London hair team – to test the waters and explore whether the Emirate could possibly be the stage for my next career plot twist. My first meetings were charged with excitement on the day of the Chanel Cruise show, held at a purpose-built oasis on a private island owned by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai. What followed was Karl’s vision of One Thousand and One Nights, replete with tweeds woven to evoke the Palestinian keffiyeh and silks inspired by the majestic tiles of Morocco… or so I’ve learned since, as I wasn’t invited to the show. Yet the fact I was here when it happened was enough to convince me to leave London for what, to me at the time, was this mysterious city in the Middle East and make it my home. After all, if it was good enough for Karl Lagerfeld… Seven years on, as the Maison returns to the Middle East, my invite to Virginie Viard’s show is assured, beautifully bringing my Chanel Cruise story full circle – but not without some memorable stops around the world on the way.
DE LA SEOUL
In Seoul, Karl Lagerfeld presented a very different vision of the future for Chanel. The neo-futuristic Dongdaemun Design Plaza, designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid, was the shiny silver, cherry blossom-strewn show space playing host to “modern version of the pop art scene” – to quote Karl – that was brought to life at Chanel Cruise Seoul. “Cruise is about travelling,” he declared. “The modernity of Korea was something I was used to as an idea, but I wanted to see the reality, so I showed Cruise in Korea.”
With Kristen Stewart, Gisele Bündchen and Tilda Swinton on the front row, South Korean-born supermodel Soo Joo Park opened the show, following the rainbow-coloured trail of circles snaking around the stark white set in a traditional tweed two-piece given a K-pop spin by Karl. “I have never seen a collection inspired by Korean traditions in a modern way. I like Korean roots but it had to be adapted to the world of today and what I can use for Chanel all over the world.”
This manifested itself in the voluminous silhouettes, above-the-bust waistlines and, in Karl’s words, “an updated version of the Chanel jacket” with rounded shoulders and over-sized sleeves based on the hanbok, Korea’s national dress. “It’s a cosmopolitan idea of the local fashion,” he noted. In addition to tweed, broderie anglaise, linen, organza, tulle, lace and patent leather danced down the catwalk as well as Mademoiselle Chanel’s favourite shantung silk, plus cloth sourced from the region especially for the collection. “We had some fabrics made here because they don’t exist elsewhere,” he revealed. “I love Korean writing. It’s like Cubism,” he pointed out, which was reflected in pastel patchworks and geometric prints in a colour clash of fuchsia, violet, coral and turquoise.
While the previous port of call for Chanel Cruise was the sandy shores of Dubai – where Karl took his cues from the art, architecture, and traditions of Arabia – Seoul came as a fun, upbeat, colourful, pop-culture counterbalance. “I loved it. I really loved it,” Kristen Stewart enthused after the show. “It goes with the time, it’s contemporary, it’s fun, it’s bold and it’s also classic, and those things don’t typically go together. And that’s what he channels every time.”
Meanwhile, Gisele Bündchen watched the show from the FROW for a change. Describing the Cruise Seoul universe, she gushed, “It’s a whole world that he creates, and I think that’s very much him because if you see the Chanel runway, there’s an idea, a scenario behind the clothes that’s complementing them. So you feel like you’re in a different world. It’s really an experience.” Th is even extended to a mini Chanel carnival to celebrate Children’s Day outside Dongdaemun, complete with carousel and brightly coloured upturned umbrella bunting. Yes, it’s Karl’s world; we just live in it.
THE GREEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
I’ve always believed that all the best catwalk shows begin not the moment you take your seat, but as soon as you open your invitation. In the case of Chanel Cruise 2017/18, my experience began in Paris, with sweepingly cinematic views of the Eiffel Tower and La Seine below me that made my heart explode. To set the tone for the show Karl named La Modernité de l’Antiquité – The Modernity of Antiquity – the invite bore an image of a headless bust of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, an objet d’art owned by Gabrielle Chanel herself.
Heralding the death knell for the destination show – which had previously seen the Chanel Cruise story unfold in far-flung locations which have included Singapore, Seoul, Dallas and Dubai – Karl instead transformed Galerie Courbe at the Grand Palais in Paris into a Grecian fresco come to life, complete with olive trees, crumbling columns and sand beneath our feet, where each of the looks emerged from what looked like the very gateway to antiquity itself. Karl’s Cruise adventure began, of course, with tweed, but not as we know it. Th e timelessness of the Chanel jacket took on a new classicism, expressed in fringed tunics cinched with braided rope belts. Organic and geometric knitwear motifs were borrowed from ancient vases and friezes, while dresses were decorated with gold-tinged crowns of oak leaves and laurel wreathes intertwined with Gabrielle Chanel’s signature flower, the camellia. Th e vitality of print gave way to burnished golds, sun-baked terracottas and startling Aegean blues, while the purity of white was reinterpreted in sunray-pleated culottes, diaphanous draping and artful asymmetry, edged with gilded olive leaves.
The Gabrielle bag was reincarnated in marbled leather and adorned with knitted owl and antique vase motifs, while olive branches repeating on belts, cuffs and bracelets, provided punctuation with solid gold accents. And a strong contender for the new heel shape of the season, the platform gladiator, was revisited with laced leather straps and propped up by pillars. All the while, Helen of Troy hair was halo-ed with plaited, embellished and padded headbands that wouldn’t look out of place on Sloane Street – which might eventually become their final destination.
Of his modern approach to antiquity, Karl observed, “I think it still looks like Chanel even if Chanel never did it that way. You have to give a twist and you have to use elements of the Greek culture from those days in a fun way, not in a heavy, historical way.” Conspicuous by their absence, however, were the millennials, Insta-girls and celebrity progeny, both on the FROW and in the show – no Gigi, Bella, Kendall or Lily-Rose – which was perhaps a comment about modernity in itself. “I’m suggesting going back to move forward. To create the future, you have to pay attention to the past,” Karl insisted. As a storied house with a rich history plundering the past as an ode to the future, Karl succeeded in merging antiquity with modernity. “Reality is of no interest to me,” he remarked. “My Greece is an idea.” However, Karl’s fashion fantasy aside, while the catwalk shows that burn a place in our memories may begin the moment we open the invitation, they also make a comment about society, a statement about the world today, and leave us with renewed hope for tomorrow.
KARL LAGERFELD PUSHES THE BOAT OUT
The soothing splash of the rising tide, the distant caw of seagulls circling overhead, and the majestic blast of the ship’s horn greeted me as I clutched the carte d’embarquement that served as our show ticket to Chanel Cruise 2018/2019. But this was no far-flung location. Instead, we were back in Paris, standing in the shadow of La Pausa, a 148-metre replica ocean liner, purpose-built within the Grand Palais. Easily one of the most awe-inspiring catwalk sets – and after-party venues – fashion has ever seen.
With the tide turning against the destination Cruise show – a trend led by Karl himself – Chanel was the first to present in France this season, with Dior up next as Maria Grazia Chiuri presumably sustains the wild horses theme in the stables of Chantilly Castle in the suburbs of Paris; Louis Vuitton following at the Maeght Foundation, a contemporary art museum in Saint-Paul de Vence on the Côte d’Azur; and Gucci taking over the Roman necropolis of Alyscamps, a Unesco World Heritage Site, in the French city of Arles. Only Miuccia Prada swam against the current, showing her second Cruise collection at a piano-factory-turned-Prada-HQ in New York.
As I took my seat on the FROW, Chanel Cruise 2018/2019 set sail with a collection that distilled the purest elements of Gabrielle Chanel’s original vision for the first Cruise collection she presented Autumn 1919, intended for the beaches of Biarritz. Chanel’s centenary Cruise collection featured plays on nautical stripes made modern, manifesting in delicate feathers protected by PVC, or fashioned from trompe l’oeil sequins. Gigi and Bella Hadid took to the port side in round-shouldered tweed two-pieces, while Moroccan model-of-the moment Nora Attal flounced down the runway in a shark-tooth print accessorised with fingerless gloves and a shimmering sequinned beret.
For the rousing finale, Karl emerged resplendent on the steps of the ocean liner, accompanied by Chanel Studio Director Virginie Viard, flanked by models in the most vibrant prints from the show, while Gigi and co. marched down the dock to Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 crowd-pleasing synth-pop anthem Go West. And fostering the next generation – while silencing criticism of the elitism of Cruise show’s extravagant set designs – two days after the show, 500 students were invited aboard La Pausa to discover the collection and attend a masterclass with Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Fashion at Chanel, who called the workshop “an experiment” and “part of Chanel’s desire to hand its values and its passion down to the talented young people of fashion’sfuture.” Boldly navigating uncharted waters, if you will.
VIRGINIE VIARD’S TICKET TO RIDE
You have to applaud Virginie Viard – the first woman to take on the mighty Chanel Maison as Artistic Director since its iconic founder Gabrielle Chanel, and the first designer to succeed the equally iconic Karl Lagerfeld – undoubtedly the fashion world’s hardest acts to follow. And of all the designers who could follow them, she is surely the best qualified. As head of the Chanel studio, Virginie oversaw every cut, stitch, button and piece of embroidery. She absorbed Karl’s every vision and helped transform it into reality, acting as a conduit between him and the ateliers, which she ran with military precision.
Following his death in February 2019, she was handed the creative reins of Chanel, the world’s most desired megabrand that last year revealed sales of $9.6bn. Th is Cruise collection was her first solo outing, our first glimpse of what she might do with the brand and her first steps towards filling Karl’s impossibly gigantic shoes. The scene, as ever, was the Grand Palais, its vaulted domed glass ceiling dwarfing the set that had been decked out like a train station, lined with wooden benches under signs bearing the destinations of Venice, Saint Tropez, Rome, Edinburgh – cities that have all played a part in the house’s heritage. But where Karl might have insisted on real-life steam trains chugging into the Grand Palais station (with an “If you can’t afford to do it, then you can’t afford me” flourish and a witty pun – all aboard the Chanel Express! – along with the invitation to preen in front of the set and take endless selfies), the scene here was entirely different. The set was less extravagant and the atmosphere strangely subdued, which was only to be expected in a post-Lagerfeld Chanel world.
Out poured the clothes, of the type we have long associated with the iconography of Chanel – the boxy tweed jackets, skirt suits, frothy blouses, sequinned sweaters, tiered gowns, quilted bags, camellias, double Cs and pearls. Th e spirit of Coco Chanel was there from the opening look – a black gabardine jacket and wide pants with a soft white blouse adorned with a single camellia that conjured Coco’s love for masculine-feminine tailoring. And there were plenty of Karlisms, including his fixation with haute-athleisure (here, body stockings and leggings were sprinkled with the CC logo) and witty homage was paid to him in the last look – a black column suspended from a stiff white Edwardian collar worn by a model with silvered hair.
And yet, between all the respectful reverence came dazzling pieces that suggested something new – a sliver of a red tweed coat, a long chestnut stationmaster mac, blurred prints like landscapes seen from the window of a speeding train, Bermudas and striped sweaters that looked très cool Parisienne, with two-tone patent sock boots and delicious white lace gowns that had the lightest of decorative touches in the form of simple black bows.
“She knows everything about Chanel. She was the right hand and the left hand, and she’s ready to write a new part of the Chanel history,” insisted Bruno Pavlovsky, dismissing the inevitable rumour circulating prior to this show that Virginie had been installed as caretaker of the brand before a big-name designer could be drafted in. That she is the most deserving of this appointment is without question, but the fashion world is accustomed to high drama, including drastic designer substitutions on the ever-changing fashion merry-go-round.
As Virginie stepped out to take her bow, she was visibly moved – many, including Chanel faces Ali MacGraw, Vanessa Paradis and Claudia Schiffer, were on their feet in support. And rightly so. If the industry is still coming to terms with a world without Karl, we can only imagine the impact on his successor and the Chanel team. It may be too soon to say if Virginie Viard can embrace the past while making her own impactful future at the house, but right now her quiet power feels like the perfect ticket for Chanel.
A HOMECOMING
Since succeeding Karl Lagerfeld as Artistic Director of Chanel, Virginie Viard has quietly and respectfully been introducing a new mood at the Maison. Thanks to Karl, Chanel Cruise shows have always been an exuberant adventure around the globe, yet choice and happenstance – read: the global pandemic – have anchored Virginie’s presentations firmly, or at least physically, in France, leading to a more nuanced vision, in a reality that’s been altered beyond recognition. So while the decision to show in Dubai seems like an homage to Karl, the collection coming to Dubai Creek Harbour on 2 November 2021 – which was first unveiled in May this year at the Brutalist surroundings of the Carrières de Lumières quarry turned cultural space in the village of Les Baux-de- Provence – is resolutely Virginie. When is a Cruise show not an invitation to travel the world? When Chanel comes to you, of course.
