Chanel’s honeymoon period with new designer Matthieu Blazy shows no signs of cooling. Blazy’s fifth catwalk show – on the Biarritz beachfront where young milliner Gabrielle Chanel opened a boutique in 1915 – was an irresistibly seductive love letter to the enduring allure of the double-C logo.
On the day before the show, sales assistants at the Biarritz boutique were holding up Chanel beach towels on the shop floor to create extra changing room space for shoppers impatient to buy jeans at €3,100 a pair. Blazy’s jeans are becoming a totem of the new Chanel, which – in aesthetic, although certainly not in price – marries high taste with an inclusive, democratic point of view.
In a casino ballroom with a beachfront view over surfers riding the Bay of Biscay waves onto golden sands, Chanel skirt suits came in pink denim, or in tissue-fine silks worn over sporty tank tops.
There were models in their 50s and 60s, while Kaya, six months’ pregnant, wore her suit jacket open over her bump and swung a pair of tiny two-tone shoes – a show-day gift from Blazy – from her handbag.
There were easy quarter-zip sweaters with Basque-striped skirts, and huge double-C logos that Blazy described as “the rock T-shirt” of Chanel. Oversized straw baskets and eye-candy seahorse earrings nodded to the pop spirit of Karl Lagerfeld, but with the bold colour palette that sets the new era apart from the sugary kitsch of Lagerfeld’s reign.
A turquoise gown of shimmering pailettes with a train that slapped the catwalk like a mermaid’s tail was inspired by an image Blazy showed to reporters backstage after the show of an art deco mural on the Biarritz lighthouse, depicting two mermaids with tails entwined to form a Chanel-alike double C.
Biarritz was where “Gabrielle watched the swimmers, she tanned herself, she wore French workwear,” Blazy said. The outdoor lifestyle and wild Atlantic weather honed her taste for comfortable, practical clothes.
His show began with a little black dress, celebrating the centenary year of the radically simple look which Vogue, in 1926, dubbed “Chanel’s Ford”. “She borrowed the black dress from the workers, from the servant, from the shop girls,” Blazy said. “She decontextualised it and put it on the aristocracy, imposing her taste on them. It was a revenge on her own social status.”
A newspaper print suit, emblazoned with headlines about Chanel’s time in Biarritz, was another nod to her radical spirit. “There is a quote where she said, ‘I like to read the newspaper, like men.’ I thought that was really interesting,” said the designer. “Also, I like the idea of being on the coast and having fish and chips!”
“Matthieu’s research is stunning, and it gives him the freedom to twist, to create the Chanel of today and tomorrow,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion, before the show. Chanel has “tens of thousands” of VICs – Very Important Clients, defined as those who spend more than €100,000 per year in store –he added. “We have more VICs than any other brand, and they are super happy now. They come, they try – and they buy. So we don’t want crazy growth, we don’t need to go fast. Our objective is to be stronger in 20 years.”
Destination catwalk shows selling a lifestyle dream in exotic locations have become fashion’s most elite battleground, a Champion’s League for the superbrands who can afford to compete. Hot on the heels of Chanel’s Biarritz spectacular will be a Los Angeles show for Dior – another brand enjoying fashion’s equivalent of a new manager bounce – followed by Gucci and Louis Vuitton events in New York, and a MaxMara catwalk in Shanghai.
These shows offer the opportunity to buy mind share, as well as market share. Unlike at traditional fashion weeks, where even mighty brands have only a one hour slot in a week of shows, a destination show gives luxury brands an extended primetime slot with which to lovebomb social media. Chanel’s Biarritz takeover extended beyond the show, with a food market in the Basque city transformed into a cocktail party for guests including Nicole Kidman, Michaela Coel and Tilda Swinton, and a screen installed in the Gare du Midi exhibition hall for local residents to watch the show.