The CHANEL Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture Show | FHCM

The Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection takes its starting point in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment at 31, rue Cambon. The place, where Virginie Viard met Xavier Veilhan at the very beginning of their work, is populated with lions, does, stags, birds and camels. “The whole embroidery universe of the collection is turned towards the animal world, she says. For his third participation, I asked him to reinterpret the apartment’s bestiary and incorporate his own.”

Embroidered on tweed short suits and coat dresses, kittens, corgis, rabbits and swallows share the limelight with the does, stags or camellias emblematic of the House.

As if on a village square, a festive parade is being prepared and sets off. The eleven monumental animals made of wood, cardboard and paper created by Xavier Veilhan hide and, then, let models escape. “I like it when the marvellous arises and the course of events is interrupted,” she continues.

The CHANEL suit borrows its codes from the female uniforms of the worlds of parade and show. Top hat, bow tie, white gloves, laced boots, satin cape, pleated skirt, double-breasted jacket or with tails, tuxedo shirt, sequins, short shorts, petticoats: it is in the poetry of majorettes and animal tamers that Virginie Viard draws the imagination of her collection.

Dresses and jumpsuits all in lightness and refinement, superpositions, transparencies, flounces, pleats, fine straps and repainted laces, are declined in silk tulle, taffeta, organza, georgette crepe and chantilly lace.

And as in every beautiful story, the Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection, with its animal and fairy parade, ends with a bride in a dress embroidered with swallows.