In a vision that imagines Gabrielle Chanel’s life as a fairy tale, CHANEL’s Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, Matthieu Blazy, decided to write the next chapter of his sophomore Haute Couture collection for the House, embracing the idea of turning garments into books that tells the narrative and stories of the women who wear CHANEL.
Images courtesy of CHANEL.
Suspended between fiction and function, it is a collection of tales that explores the symbiosis between making and wearing clothes.
Images courtesy of CHANEL.
Taking inspiration from familiar fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Matthieu’s collection embraced old and new ways of thinking, seeing, and making, via the rigour of cut and construction on the body; while still remaining firmly rooted in the style of the House and the supreme skills of the Haute Couture tailleur, flou and galon (braid) ateliers, and the artisans of fabric-making, embroidery, pleating, hat-making, goldsmithing, and shoemaking at le19M.
In this collection, a CHANEL suit is constructed from guipure, echoing the idea of magic beans, interspersed with transparencies of light silk mousseline — an apt representation of the collection which opened the show.
Images courtesy of CHANEL.
Other pieces of the collection saw the inner life of storybooks transferred into its design ranging from a vine that might creep up the heel of a shoe, to a small minaudière appearing as a sleeping bear, and a series of buttons that might transform from duckling to swan.
Alterning necklines, hemlines, fabrics and accessories are reached through weaving, embroidery, layering and appliqué, elevating everyday objects and noble materials alongside the adaptation of make-do-and-mend, to the very heights of Haute Couture.
With a focus on the tailleur’s supreme cutting skills and their flow in the flou, Gabrielle Chanel’s unique physicality and construction on the body are reflected in the slashing of clothes that frees the form for motion and action, making the clothes something to live in rather than to merely be in.
