Chanel Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023

G-Dragon, Tilda Swinton, And Animal Art At Chanel Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023.

The Chanel Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2023 show began with a festive parade of wooden and paper sculptures created by artist Xavier Veilhan.

“For the third time, Virginie is working with Xavier Veilhan and it’s a very good starting point for the collection. Virginie loves seeing what he is able to propose, and it’s a dialogue between them. Here, it’s a new experience, daring to include unexpected elements which give a story. It’s her vision from the Chanel bestiary but a very modern approach,” Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, said before the show. “I found it interesting to evoke the relationships to animals which is constantly evolving in our societies. This time I wanted to move towards something immediate and straightforward, with lightness and fantasy, without being naïve,” Veilhan commented. While there was a rawness and minimalism to the set-up, the outcome was light-hearted – a feeling backed up by Felix’s techno “Don’t You Want Me” from 1992.

Viard cited parades and majorettes as inspirations for the collection, something that could easily have manifested in a very different expression had she not reduced and distilled her influences the way she did. When constructions intensified, like the dense micro-ruffling of a rigid A-line skirt and a floor-length coat, or the polite petticoats adorned in tactile flower applique, she maintained her purified approach. It materialised in a mainly black and white palette, with occasional dusty colours. “I like it when the marvellous bursts forth and the course of events is interrupted,” she said, referring to the set, but the same could be said for her own creations. In the unlikely meeting she staged between couture, pageantry and techno, the Chanel collection emerged triumphantly sophisticated.

Roger Federer, Anna Wintour, and Baz Luhrmann were among the famous faces in the front row for the show, the first of two set to take place today, at the Grand Palais Ephemere. The show set was created by artist Xavier Veilhan, with whom creative director Virginie Viard regularly collaborates, and featured giant wooden horses, mice, elephants and mythological creatures made from wood.