In her first ad campaign for a house in Monaco, her native country, Charlotte Casiraghi, Chanel's newly appointed brand ambassador, is set to star. The tiny but widely recognized principality embodies glamour and has played host to many famous movies such as "Golden Eye" and "To Catch A Thief." 

Photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin were in charge of the Spring 2021 campaign shoot, taking separate shots of the royal with her pose both day and night, using both color and black-and-white film. Furthermore, this selection is based on cinematic settings. From a swimming pool to a bedroom with locations like La Vigie, a villa in nearby Roquebrune-Cap-Martin that was a long-time resident of former Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld, a friend of Princess Caroline of Monaco's mother.

Charlotte has a mysterious quality, a push-pull duality that emphasizes our play on the merging of reality and dream. Staging the set-ups in similar locations both at night and during the day was the starting point for this series in which Charlotte fluctuates between dream and reality.

The news of Casiraghi’s joining the Chanel ambassador team was revealed in early December. In doing so, she joined a cast of impressive characters like Kristen Stewart, Marion Cotillard, and Lily-Rose Depp. In the video announcing the partnership, Casiraghi lauded Chanel’s current creative director, Virginie Viard, for her skillful handling of the house codes and history.

In some houses with strong symbols, designers mess around with them, and you can see it. But not with Virginie. She doesn’t make a big fuss; she just gets on with it… What’s great about this collection is that it’s the ideal female wardrobe, It was so pleasing to wear the collection for the shoot, and I got very emotional doing it at La Vigie, a house on a hill overlooking Monaco, which is full of history for me, as it’s Karl’s old house.

In other news, Versace Pre-Fall 2021. “The collection is dedicated to all those men and women who are self-confident, aware of who they are, authentic."

Photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin shoot Casiraghi in Monaco, The Royal’s native country.

CHANEL REVEALS FIRST CAMPAIGN STARRING CHARLOTTE CASIRAGHI

The Château de Chenonceaux was built in the early 16th century in the small village of Chenonceaux in the Loire Valley about two hundred kilometers southwest of Paris, with an extension spanning the river Cher added in the mid-1550s by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l'Orme and Jean Buillant, the added structure commissioned by Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of He. Because of all the prominent female owners who had individually restored and repaired the property in their own ways, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, Louise de Lorraine, Louise Dupin, and Marguerite Pelouze, the castle is commonly referred to as Le Château des Dames-The Women's Castle.

Catherine de Medici, the widow of Henry II and regent of all these women property owners, converted the compound into her residence after he died in 1559 and added extravagant gardens, the bridge gallery, sumptuous wings, and rooms-one of the black and white diamond pattern tile galleries was where the Chanel Métiers d'art show took place without a physical audience and filmed for broadcasting. Initially scheduled with a limited number of guests and eventually cancelled due to the second lockdown currently in place, the show was filmed with only one guest present two days before the actress Kristen Stewart wearing a black dress with a long pearl necklace sitting on a brown wooden bench by herself.

In a black and white bound book that serves as a visual history of the castle with its interior and exterior grandeur, the photos that Juergen Teller took of the castle's grounds were printed. The cloth-bound picture book along with another smaller Teller preview shoot book is the first time that a Chanel campaign has been taken by Teller. These cloth-bound books provide the show with a tactile feel that complements the online video teasers before the actual show.

He revealed the sumptuous ground as well as the natural world surrounding the property in Teller's picture book of the castle, as well as the close-up inside quarters. The gold-encrusted double reversible CC is on the stone marble above the entrance of the castle under a gold crown, a cement rectangular block is outside on the road to one of the gardens with the same reversible CC etched into the grey cement now laced with greenish algae, a lion's marble is carved on the mantle, and another lion is depicted on a faded large tapestry. Out in the wooded forest, there is also a black lion set in steel. The grounds of the castle are riddled with the same traditional symbols-the interlocking CC and the lion-representing the past and present, not in terms of remaking the past for now but in terms of displaying then and now the same concept and spirit.

Showing at the Château de Chenonceau, at the ‘Château des Dames’, was an obvious choice. It was designed and lived in by women, including Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici. It is a castle on a human scale. And Catherine de Medici’s emblem was a monogram composed of two intertwined Cs, just like that of Chanel.

These were symbols that Catherine de Medici developed, known for her strength and non-compliance with norms. The royal regent chose to mount her horses rather than on the planchette with her leg on the saddletree as was customary at the time. To Medici, this was her pursuit of liberty, not grand sweeps of tiny and meaningful gestures. A text booklet by Fanny Arama entitled D'une renaissance à l'autre (From One Renaissance to Another) compares Catherine de Medici and Gabrielle Chanel's past lifestyle similarities.

Horses also provided a sense of freedom for Gabrielle Chanel. Her first step as a liberated woman was in fact, a ride across Étienne Balsan’s estate in Royallieu. On horseback, a woman is not accountable to anyone. From this intimacy with the equestrian world, she retained an elegant and pure vision of fashion, indeed that it should serve the woman as much as dress her.

“We don’t know if Coco was directly inspired by her, but it is highly likely because she so admired Renaissance women. Her taste for lace ruffs and the aesthetics of certain pieces of her jewelry comes from there. Deep down, this place is part of Chanel’s history. In 1936, Gabrielle Chanel wrote an article on the women of that era: ‘I have always been struck by a strange feeling of sympathy and admiration for the women who lived from Francois I to Louis XIII, perhaps because I find them all to be great, with magnificent simplicity and a majesty imbued with onerous duties,” Viard said.

With its skinny, linear, and long dimensions, the Château de Chenonceau, a location where tasteful royal mistresses and wives converged in the past centuries, offered the ideal wrapping for this pre-fall 2021 series of Métiers d'art with a selection of clothes cut precisely in lean and tall silhouettes, many with skirts and coats ankle-length. For these times, black and white evening gowns were subtle as a great black strapless dress with a long back tail worn with a metallic crusted belt and silver leggings that closed this well-edited show.

The brown suede quilted coats for the outdoors have a whiff of sport. A slight expose of sexiness in the front side split long skirt showing off the silver leggings and those tweed body suits, a black tweed one-piece with gold buttoning and pocket trim and a sleeveless gray tweed with a collarless jacket, maybe something not as expected. 

The artisanal specialty crafts important to fashion that Chanel has begun to acquire since 1985 with the purchase of the parurier Desrues in 2002 as a tribute to the numerous maisons d'art, followed by forty other acquisitions over the years that will see 11 of these houses come together in 2021 in a new 19M building located in the northern suburb of Aubervilliers in Paris.

Many of these artisan houses collaborated with Gabrielle Chanel directly. In 1954, she employed hardware metal manufacturer Goossens to produce jewelry, shoemaker Massaro to make the bi-color shoe in 1957, and flower manufacturer Lemarié to develop the camellia's fabric flower version, duties that these houses continue today. 

Owing to the pandemic constraints, when the supply chain has faced difficulties, Chanel's ready to wear is mostly manufactured in France. All the craft specialties owned by the Chanel subsidiary Paraffection have been improved and consolidated to provide the French fashion industry with the know-how that is essential for French luxury fashion, not just Chanel.

While this collection is a celebration of all the specialty artisans' handiwork, the clothes never felt over-indulged or over-embellished-in fact, the decorations are kept to the essential only. 

The vivid floral embroideries made by the embroiderer Lesage were as light as the sparse garden terrain surrounding the castle on a lapel of a white single breast one-button jacket. The Montex embroiderer made the short black and white skirts that were worn with the gold tweed jacket, the black fur trim jacket and the black leather tunic that opened the show. The black short sleeve lace dress composed of lattices sprinkled with metal studs was made by plumassier and florist Lemarié.

“And a big black hat by Maison Michel, for a look that is very Milady! I also asked the atelier Montex to make embroideries from the castle in the style of a child’s toy in strass. Because I like everything to be mixed up, all the different eras, between the Renaissance and romanticism, between rock and something very girly,” Viard said.

Every season, the Chanel codes produce new fruits with new fabrics and especially in this collection of Métiers d'art, which focuses specifically on the artisanal craftsmanship of new surface decorations expertly handmade by the specialty craftsmen celebrated by this special collection.

This time, from the light pink tweed suit with a short jacket with flare sleeves and short skirt to a blue version worn under a sleeveless multicolor tweed skirt suit or under a white long wool coat with embroidered sleeves, a silver or pink stretch bodysuit serves as a basic layer indicating that the clothes can be interchangeable. 

Despite the location of the castle and the exquisite handiwork, the clothes do not feel that they are too precious to be worn-in fact, quite the contrary, these are clothes made for the groups of women-younger, older, and between-who can choose between a white tweed body suit that should be a hit for younger women and maybe their mothers can choose a gray tweed skirt suit with a small v-neckl The castle's famous tapestries can now be seen on the mustard intarsia knits of one of Barrie's artisan houses.

In a different era to today, this collection aims to channel a timeless spirit with clothes that are easy to wear and less weighty. To reinforce the present, it is not so much a look back to find inspiration from the past, but rather to look for parallel spirits. Towards the end of the show, the black evening dresses were a tribute to Louise de Lorraine, King Henry III's wife, who wore only black mourning clothes after learning of the assassination of her husband.

Her work has so far shown restrictions in providing any collections that seemed too outlandish or too trendy and veered away from the language of the house during the few seasons that Viard commanded the creative direction for fashion at Chanel. In the last decade, her shows have been scaled down from the massive undertaking of the Karl Lagerfeld era, perhaps fewer set constructions and more real-life clothing construction with shows just with the minimum help of stagecraft.

That said there are two new jacket designs in this collection not seen in Viard’s previous shows – a cropped reddish tweed deep v-neck panel front jacket with sleeves coming out from under the panels that draped into the waist and buttoned at the navel and a more severe version as a black/silver tweed jacket with two white trimmed front panels draped over the waist and belted. Both jackets are paired with blue and full floral skirts with long prints. It’s a subtle positioning of new design ideas; however they are there.

Ellery Spring 2021 Ready-to-Wear. “It was so interesting to take something, like, not quite deadstock, but something that as a garment has an almost negative energy to it, and rework it to lend it a new freshness and identity, a second life.”

Review of Chanel ‘Le Château des Dames’ Métiers d’art 2020/21 Fashion Show.

CHANEL METIERS D'ART 2020/21 FASHION SHOW

Chanel dreams up an elegantly surreal new campaign for the holiday season. The campaign celebrates the house’s watches and fine jewelry collection, and features film direction and photography from Thurstan Redding.

The project is created by the same production team as Chanel’s spring jewelry campaign from the beginning of this year, which was one of our favorite accessories campaigns of that season. The film followed a group of beautiful strangers who met on an elevator which happened to be going up to the moon.

The new short film picks up right where the last one left off. We haven’t quite reached the moon, and our group of protagonists steps off the elevator into a surreal dream world. The excellently designed set is a room with walls made of impenetrable shadows, decorated with a fusion of baroque and avant-garde furniture. The characters explore this space, having psychedelic encounters or discovering small and strange moments of beauty.

Redding’s photographs feel equally inspired by contemporary fashion photography and baroque portraiture. This latter influence is apparent in his dramatic use of shadow; much of his compositions are swathed in darkness, while his subject’s faces emerge dramatically out of the gloom.

But the use of darkness that so strongly characterizes the campaign never feels “dark” in the sense of being ominous or evil – rather, it feels suggestive of possibility. Combined with the light from the silver, gold, and diamond of the jewelry collection, this tenebrism actually feels comforting and luxurious: it is the darkness of sleeping, of dreaming.

Chanel impresses us again by conjuring such a singular aesthetic and mood, celebrating for the holidays a dream-like sense of unlimited possibility.

Review of Chanel ‘Dream Never Fades’ Holiday 2020 Watches and Fine Jewelry Ad Campaign by Cinq Étoiles Productions & Director/Photographer Thurstan Redding

CHANEL DREAM NEVER FADES HOLIDAY 2020 AD CAMPAIGN

After over two years of extensive renovation, the Palais Galliera Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris reopened last week with an anchor exhibition –Gabrielle Chanel Manifeste de Modethat will run through near the end of March 2021. 

Viard thoughts brought back images of the actresses years ago hanging on the walls of the Palais Galliera not far from the Grand Palais. “Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld dressed so many actresses in films and in real life. I was thinking about them. But without wanting to replicate. Without falling into a vintage citation. I wanted it to be very joyful, colorful and very vibrant too,” Viard said. 

Made for today and for women now, these clothes followed the road map and principles laid out long ago by the house’s founder but they are not enslaved to them. The white blouson with black lapel worn with a black logo high slit skirt and a white bra top, the ecru sleeveless classic jacket and asymmetrical fold skirt, the ecru tweed sleeveless midriff tank paired with a short and a matching loose cardigan as a three pieces suit are the new clothes designed with the fast paced life of women today in mind and the notion of comfort signaled by the current pandemic crisis where more time is spent at home than ever. 

No wonder why the three models in the series of teasers before the show never actually wanted to leave their apartments. These spring clothes merge forms and functions. Even the evening clothes are significantly pared down as the embellishments of the past now float lightly on a black slim collarless jacket with light beading over black chiffon skirt and long cape train that flew behind the model’s back. 

Seeing a new designer at work is always a process that can take a few seasons to sort out the new look and so forth. The slit skirts with the suits or separately looked smoother this time than at the fall 2020 show. And a tighter edit helped to strengthen the show.  

Made for today and for women now, these clothes followed the road map and principles laid out long ago by the house’s founder but they are not enslaved to them.

CHANEL SPRING 2021 FASHION SHOW ATMOSPHERE

Looking at any Chanel shows there is always that notion of observing the familiar, that the clothes are often what is already known and recognized – the colors and the fabrics change slightly, the sleeves shortened a bit, the hemlines of the skirts shifted up and down, the shoulder got a special treatment or the waist line got more focus. Why so much has not changed is because the ‘Chanel’ idea remain solid through the decades – in her time, Mlle Gabrielle never wavered to trends.

Her radicalism was this head on steadfast standing guard of her own vision against changes around her and the Galliera exhibition showed this forcefully inside its galleries including the new ground floor. Women today want the same idea of freedom and movement as much as during the twentieth century and perhaps the clothes as well.

The Lagerfeld years at Chanel produced wonderful and magnificent memories and poignant point of views for consumers to feel renewed each time they purchase a Chanel product. But like all memories, fashion memories fade over time and faster now than ever before. The customers have to be reminded again and again of the worth of the brand and what the brand stand for in terms of products and in terms of values. Now, it’s Viard turn to carry the torch forward linking the past to the present and the future. 

And this process of simplification is most noticeable on the clothes that Viard sent out especially today where the new tweeds suit were as light and soft and even oversized for added comfort as in the opening double breast jacket with slouchy shoulder paired with a knee length skirt with a slit on the right side of the legs. The luxury quotient of these suits is in the details: the embroidered trims, the buttons, and the complex new tweed fabrics that looked soft and hefty at the same time. 

The prevailing silhouettes are clean, relaxed and mostly linear with grey tweed floor length dress, light pink cardigan with black trim pattern resembling a jacket paired with print charcoal pleated pants, pink embroidered silk dress with black chiffon cape and underskirt, an ecru sport jacket and knee length short, or a white or black crepe deep v-neck floor length vest with black silk trims paired with pocket pants.  

The luxury quotient of these suits is in the details: the embroidered trims, the buttons, and the complex new tweed fabrics that looked soft and hefty at the same time. 

The Chanel show set, in Paris’s soaring Grand Palais, spelled the brand’s name in giant letters, evoking the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign in the Santa Monica mountains.

Did this suggest that creative director Virginie Viard was thinking of the movies? “Less movies than actresses,” Viard explained, and particularly the modern life of actresses, from the high production values of the red carpet, to a staged off-duty look whilst getting a Starbucks in the certain knowledge that a paparazzo might be lurking in the parking lot, “the whole process!”

Meanwhile, the accompanying movie teasers, produced by Inez and Vinoodh, literally brought Paris to Tinseltown, with the Sacre Coeur nestled proudly in those Hollywood Hills—symbolic of Viard’s marriage of Parisian cool with laid-back, #WFH LA style.

The house of Chanel of course has a century-old relationship with actresses, as the recently opened exhibition Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at Paris’s dedicated fashion museum the Palais Galliera (intelligently curated by Miren Arzalluz) revealed. The exhibition subtly integrates a number of Chanel garments worn in private life and on-screen by some of the 20th century’s fabled actresses—including Grace Kelly, Delphine Seyrig, and Jeanne Moreau—as well as the voice of Marilyn Monroe, who when asked what she wore in bed famously answered “Chanel No. 5.”

Coco Chanel, who began her career as a performer singing saucy music hall songs, later made over a handful of actresses in her own image, just as she did with such beloved models in her in-house cabine as Marie-Helene Arnaud and Jackie Rogers. The designer, for instance, transformed Romy Schneider into a baby faced version of herself, and Luchino Visconti immortalized Schneider’s new look in his 1962 short movie Boccaccio 70. Chanel herself is even said to have found the new stage name for the Nouvelle Vague actress Anna Karina (nee Hanne Karin Bayer). Viard, who has all these references at her fingertips, is also drawn to femme fatale Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle’s 1958 Elevator to the Gallows, and she looked to some on-screen Chanel moments in her collection.

There was also whisper of Alain Resnais’s highly stylized 1962 opus Last Year at Marienbad starring Delphine Seyrig, evoked in some fluttering black chiffon 1920s skirts and capes, worn with bead-frosted singlets. And the world of Jean Renoir’s 1939 The Rules of the Game inspired some pretty 1930s evening dresses in a Chanel document print which Viard had discovered from the same year that scattered the famous linked Cs amongst a field of gray blossoms. But Viard also used that satin print for a jumpsuit, because she was essentially evoking the real life wardrobes of contemporary actresses using her own cabine of models including many new French faces and the sophisticated Louise de Chevigny, (who, alongside Mika and Rianne, features in the Inez and Vinoodh movie clips). All of them were encouraged to do their actressy best on the runway.

The separates-based mix felt very Parisian girl cool—the sort of clothes that would appeal to hipster actresses Marion Cotillard and Anna Mougalis, for instance, who were among the guests attending the in-person show, recognizable even behind the mandatory white masks that were distributed at the door.

This meant big-shouldered 1980s looking Chanel suit jackets worn with petal pushers or stone washed denim jeans or tiny mini-skirts in candy pink or sky blue. Or an overscaled pale pink cardigan—traced with black piping that seemed hand-drawn—worn as a coat dress with a necklace that seemed assembled from cherished charms (and one of the metal linked C motif tiara headbands). Alongside those romantic black and white movie prints were overscale fluoro patterns printed on scarf silk that resembled graffiti but turned out on closer inspection to suggest neon-lit billboards advertising the latest epic by Coco or Chanel. There were even t-shirts with the old-fashioned countdown to a movie permanently frozen at 5 seconds.

“It felt like watching your very cool aunt or an extremely sassy, confident teenager,” noted playwright Jeremy O. Harris, “and I love how disparate those polarities are—so cool and great—and two women I want to be friends with and … want to be. Like, who doesn’t want to be Regina George?!”

Karl Otto Lagerfeld was a German creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer, and caricaturist who lived in Paris.

He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, a position held from 1983 until his death, and was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, and of his own eponymous fashion label. He collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.

Lagerfeld was recognized for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high, starched, detachable collars.

In the 1980s, Lagerfeld was hired by Chanel, which was considered a "near-dead brand" at the time since the death of designer Coco Chanel a decade prior. Lagerfeld brought life back into the company, making it a huge success by revamping its ready-to-wear fashion line. Lagerfeld integrated the interlocked "CC" monograph of Coco Chanel into a style pattern for the House of Chanel.

In 1984, a year after his start at Chanel, Lagerfeld began his own eponymous "Karl Lagerfeld" brand. The brand was established to channel "intellectual sexiness".

In 1993, US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour walked out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show, when he employed strippers and adult-film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.

In 2002, Lagerfeld asked Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, to collaborate with him on a special denim collection for the Lagerfeld Gallery. The collection, Lagerfeld Gallery by Diesel, was co-designed by Lagerfeld and then developed by Diesel's creative team, under the supervision of Rosso. It consisted of five pieces that were presented during the designer's catwalk shows during Paris Fashion Week and then sold in highly limited editions at the Lagerfeld Galleries in Paris and Monaco and at the Diesel Denim Galleries in New York and Tokyo. During the first week of sales in New York, more than 90% of the trousers were sold out, even though prices ranged from $240 to $1,840. In a statement after the show in Paris, Rosso said: "I am honored to have met this fashion icon of our time. Karl represents creativity, tradition and challenge, and the fact that he thought of Diesel for this collaboration is a great gift and acknowledgment of our reputation as the prêt-à-porter of casual wear".

In December 2006, Lagerfeld announced the launch of a new collection for men and women dubbed K Karl Lagerfeld, which included fitted T-shirts and a wide range of jeans. In September 2010, the Couture Council of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology presented Lagerfeld with an award created for him, The Couture Council Fashion Visionary Award, at a benefit luncheon at Avery Fisher Hall, in New York City. In November 2010, Lagerfeld and Swedish crystal manufacturer Orrefors announced a collaboration to design a crystal art collection. The first collection was launched in spring 2011, called Orrefors by Karl Lagerfeld.

In 2014, Palm Beach Modern Auctions announced that many of Lagerfeld's early sketches for the House of Tiziani in Rome would be sold.

Following health complications in January 2019, Lagerfeld was admitted to the American Hospital of Paris in Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine on 18 February. He died there the following morning from complications of pancreatic cancer. Lagerfeld requested no formal funeral with plans for cremation and ashes spread at secret locations alongside his mother as well as his late partner, Jacques de Bascher.

Lagerfeld once said: "If you ask me what I’d most like to have invented in fashion, I’d say the white shirt. For me, the white shirt is the basis of everything. Everything else comes after."

"I was thinking of quirky ladies," Virginie Viard tells of her fall haute couture line for Chanel. In particular, Viard remembered Karl Lagerfeld heading off to parties with his sometime muse, the madcap Princess Diane de Beauvau-Craon, who as a teenage debutante got an American crewcut to give a kind of punk edge to the beautiful but detested pink dress her mother had chosen for her coming-out ball. "The dream for me is to live with her around," Lagerfeld said of de Beauvau-Craon when he spoke to Vogue ("The Country Girl," June 1990), "because life must never be flat. She offers a spirit of light and she is deeply spiritual." 

In an edited collection of 30 pieces, after the simplicity of the spring couture, influenced by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's schoolgirl uniforms at the Aubazine convent, Viard decided to swing back to quiet opulence for fall. Since the collection will be primarily seen via photography (Mikael Jansson shot the look book and haute couture customers will also receive a portfolio of more documentary and informative pictures), Viard was thinking of "things I would not do in a show — punk fashion, fine jewelry." Such Chanel haute bijoux include yellow diamond lions (Chanel herself was a Leo), and Viard mentions that "I love them".

In addition, the only costume jewelry used in the collection is the Goossens cabochon stones — the storied Parisian house whose creator Robert Goossens collaborated with Chanel in the late 1950s. Viard uses those classic, Byzantine-inspired jewels on a black and white tweed jacket as embroidery elements. Tweed figures big in the day and night collection: a knee-length tunic worn over boot-leg trousers, or a minidress with the classic Chanel braid trim reworked in rhinestones. There is more impressive trompe l'oeil in the allover Lesage embroidery of a lean jacket worn with an ankle-long skirt, or in the Emmanuelle Vernoux – embroidered sleeves of a decorous wool ball gown, or in the Montex sequin and wool tufts of an off-the-shoulder mini dress. Ten looks are designed using tweeds made from Vimar 1991 fantasy yarns, another luxury fashion supplier recently acquired by Chanel to add such magical names as the Lesage, Montex, and Cécile Henri embroiderers and plumassier Lemarié to its stable.

Viard is always keen to highlight the remarkable work of the great suppliers of Paris, but she does so with an elegance that actually seems ideal. 

The de Beauvau-Craon touch erupts in the form of a short frothy taffeta dress and faille ball tops, or a full-skirted retro cocktail dress of floral black and white lace spliced with lacquered pink lace — Viard calls it "my doll" — and in trendy feather mohawk bangs worn in the hair, and lace-up court shoes that would have been suitable for dancing the night away in the great '80s nightspots, such as Le Palace and Les Bain Douches. 

Yet Viard also offers elegant sophistication in items that include a sheath of inky faille with bishop sleeves or a formal evening gown of gray steel silk velvet, discreetly dusted with waist and cuff embroidery, and jackets often worn with all-in-one stocking pant boots. The looks are best characterized by Viard as "casual and grand," and this is a well-behaved couture that whispers but never cries out.

"Haute couture?" Viard's questions. "It is forever; it is for always."

Still waiting for Yohji Yamamoto and Rick Owens men's digital shows to be published later today on Paris Fashion Week official website.

Discover the look from the whole Chanel fall-winter 2020-2021 couture collection designed by the artistic director of the fashion house Virginie Viard and photographed by Mikael Jansson.

KARL LAGERFELD INSPIRES THE CHANEL FW2021 COUTURE COLLECTION

When I was younger, I would associate wearing a brooch with the women over a certain age. I grew up watching them on my grandmother - that lady was beautiful and classy. While I was a little girl, I loved their style, and I still do, I have also inherited some fabulous pieces of my grandmother's clothing. Yet I'd never considered wearing a brooch myself. Certainly not my type. That's been for sophisticated grown-up ladies, and I was more of a rock chic bracelet kid. 

I like to think I am 21 forever, but I am certainly not. And slowly but steadily my style was developing and changing naturally. I found this classic Chanel CC brooch a few years ago. And though they have always been in front of my eyes, if that makes any sense, I have never seen them. 

Now I see them showcasing beautiful dresses on ladies of all ages. I developed a fascination for myself. There is pure love indeed. So, I purchased my very first Chanel brooch in their flagship store at 31 Rue Cambon when I came to Paris a few years ago. Wrapped in the iconic white box of the flagship store, this was a stunning brooch in light gold with tiny little crystals.

Chanel brooches come in a vast variety of shapes and materials. Silver, gold, with pearls or crystals, or both, enamel, in plexiglass, or just plain and simple uber-traditional. Chanel releases a new collection every season. You want to own more than one of them, of course! 

I'm still a bracelet girl and love a good arm candy, but a brooch, or two, or even three if you dare, is now also a natural part of my uniform. I love how the brooch lifts your outfit immediately, no matter how casual or formal your starting point might be. 

They can be used for any kind of outfit. A denim jacket, a blazer, a utility jacket, a shirt, a knitted sweater. You can pin it on a beanie or on a beret too. Or even in your hair as a super chic pin. 

Do you also remember those Mugler star-shaped brooches reminding of the soviet Moscow?

The Chanel brooch is a classic piece that can lift an outfit to another level.

Chanel S. A. is a privately held company owned by Alain Wertheimer and Gérard Wertheimer, grandsons of Coco Chanel's early business partner Pierre Wertheimer.

Throughout World War II, Coco Chanel shut down her boutique at Maison Chanel — leaving only jewelry and perfumery for sale — and moved to the Hôtel Ritz Paris, where she lived with her partner, Hans Günther von Dincklage, a Nazi intelligence agent. After invading France in June 1940, the Nazis set up the Parisian occupation headquarters at the Hôtel Meurice, on Rue de la Rivoli, next to the Louvre Museum, and just around the corner from the trendy Maison Chanel S.A., at 31 rue Cambon. 

Meanwhile, in mid-1940, considering the official anti-Semitism of the Nazi occupation, Pierre Wertheimer, an early business partner of Coco Chanel,  and his family had fled France to the U.S. Later, in 1941, Coco Chanel attempted to take charge of Parfums Chanel's company but was blocked by an administrative committee that disallowed her sole disposition of the perfumery. Having foreseen the Nazi occupation policy of seizure and expropriation of Jewish business and assets in France by Germany, the majority partner, Pierre Wertheimer, had earlier, in May 1940, appointed Felix Amiot, a French Christian industrialist, as the "Aryan" proxy whose legal control of the business of Parfums Chanel proved politically acceptable to the Nazis, who then allowed the perfume enterprise to continue operating their business. 

Occupied France was full of rumors that Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator; her clandestine identity was Abwehr's secret agent 7124, codenamed "Westminster." As such, by order of the Sicherheitsdienst's General Walter Schellenberg, Chanel was sent to London on a mission to get in touch with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and discuss the details of a separate peace" which was a plan proposed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, seeking to avoid surrendering Soviet Russians to the Red Army. 

By the conclusion of War, after France's Allied liberation, Chanel was arrested for collaborating with the Nazis. In September 1944, Chanel was summoned by the Free French Purge Committee, the épuration, for interrogation re her collaborationism, yet without documentary evidence or witnesses of her collaboration with the Nazis, and due to Churchill's secret intervention on her behalf, the épuration released Coco Chanel from arrest as a traitor to France. After being liberated by Churchill's political grace, the severity of Chanel's Nazi collaboration allegations made it difficult for her to live in France; so Coco Chanel and her German husband, Hans Günther von Dincklage, went to Switzerland for eight years in exile. 

In the post-war period, during the Swiss exile of Coco Chanel from France, Pierre Wertheimer returned to Paris and regained formal administrative control over the business holdings of his family — including control over Parfums Chanel, the perfumery established with his venture capital, and successful because of the name of Chanel. 

In Switzerland, the news aroused Coco Chanel's anger at having been exploited by her business partner, for only ten percent of the money. So, she set up a Swiss parfumerie to manufacture and sell her "Chanel perfumes." In addition, Wertheimer, Parfums Chanel's majority capital stock owner, saw his business interests threatened, and infringe on his commercial rights because he had no legally exclusive rights to the name of Chanel. Nevertheless, Wertheimer avoided a lawsuit against Coco Chanel for trademark infringement, lest it harms the business image and the creative integrity of his Chanel-brand perfumery. 

Wisely, Pierre Wertheimer settled his business- and commercial-rights quarrel with Chanel and, in May 1947, they renegotiated the 1924 contract establishing Parfums Chanel — she was paid $400,000 in cash (wartime profits from the No. 5 de Chanel perfume sales); assigned a 2.0 percent running royalty from the No. 5 perfumery sales; assigned limited commercial rights to sell her Chanel perfumes in Switzerland and granted a monthly regular fixed sum that paid all of her expenses. Gabrielle Chanel closed her Swiss perfumery business in exchange and sold to Parfums Chanel the full rights to the name "Coco Chanel."

Would you prefer to read the history of Maisons Mugler or Courreges creation next time? Or maybe both - please let us know?

In her youth, Gabrielle Chanel gained the nickname Coco from her time as a chanteuse.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic little by little getting under control, the French luxury goods company Chanel predicts that the lingering economic effects will affect the luxury sector for at least the next two years. 

“We expect that the global climate will continue to affect the luxury segment negatively for at least the next 24 months,” says Chanel's CFO Philippe Blondiaux in an interview with Reuters. Despite these predictions, the group has seen a growth of 13 percent since 2019 and expects to be profitable at the end of the year. Previously having to shut down many of its retail locations, nearly 85 percent of the group's stores have now reopened, with a massive sales bounce in China going over 100 percent for a few weeks. According to the CFO, activity is beginning to resume in Paris, Milan and Berlin too. "This incredibly strong performance with the local clientele will not be enough to compensate for the absence of international business, the absence of international visitors and the fact that our duty-free business is still largely closed," said Blondiaux. Chanel has agreed to reduce promotional expenses and advertisements, slash inventory, as well as reworking fashion shows to prepare for the bleak future. 

Looking at the bigger picture, consulting firm Bain & Company says the $310-billion luxury goods market can see revenues fall by up to 35 percent this year.

Chanel S.A. It is a private French company owned by Alain Wertheimer and Gérard Wertheimer, grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer, who was the couturière Coco Chanel's early business partner. Chanel is a luxury company focusing on high fashion and ready-made clothes, luxury products, and accessories. From her time as a chanteuse, Gabrielle Chanel earned the nickname Coco in her youth. As a fashion designer, CC catered to women's taste for elegance in dress, with shirts and suits, trousers and skirts, and jewelry of simple design, that replaced the opulent, over-designed, and constrictive clothes and accessories of the 19th-century fashion. Fashion models, actresses, and icons have personified the Chanel product brands, including Catherine Deneuve, Carole Bouquet, Nicole Kidman, Anna Mouglalis, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Tautou, Kristen Stewart, Keira Knightley, Jennie Kim, Cara Delevingne, Marilyn Monroe and others.

Looking forward to hearing from big fashion houses such as Alexander Wang or Mugler about their future plans and prognoses.

Despite predicting a profitable year overall.

CHANEL: CORONAVIRUS WILL AFFECT LUXURY SEGMENT FOR AT LEAST NEXT TWO YEARS

Luxury giant Chanel did something in the brand's history yesterday that has never been done before: presented the new collection without staging a fashion show. No space ships, no big malls, no re-created airports — just a few lookbook pictures and some images of Mediterranean landscapes published on Instagram. 

This meant, for once, that the focus was on the clothes now, rather than on the massive spectacles and backdrops from previous big-budget shows. The Cruise 2021 collection, which was supposed to be shown on Capri Island last month, immediately drew some strong user opinions and reactions. 

"Without the fanfare of a major runway show, one wonders: Is the Chanel Resort collection all that special?" writer Alexandra Mondalek posted on Twitter, sparking a (mostly one-sided) debate about the clothes designed by Virginie Viard, the creative director of Chanel. 

Among the big offenders were the denim capris and cropped Look 29 cardigan and Look 9 high-waisted denim featuring tweed patchwork. The general atmosphere was relatively relaxed, and in the minds of many users, most people would like to forget a very particular period of the early 2000s. 

Comparisons to pieces from ASOS and Topshop were a common point brought up, but several also noted how Viard's esthetic is beginning to depart even further from Karl Lagerfeld's artistic framework when he was in the helm. 

Some also wondered who the target market was after seeing how different from Karl's creations the mood was. "People who have too much money and not enough taste," said Sarah Schijen, the editorial strategist and former BOF writer. "Which is why it's always going to sell. Chanel isn't here for the masses, not even the trendy select committee. They know their customer and are supplying them, you just need to look at the show attendees to see that." 

The company has also made headlines today for doubling down the format of showing several times a year at a time when most designers are calling on the industry to cut its collection production to only two times a year. "You don't need to see this 6x a year," tweeted the collection's editor and influencer Chrissy Rutherford. 

Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion critic, even went as far as to call it a "multi-level disappointment," particularly since it seemed to ignore today's world contexts. "This was more like a return to the escapist shortcomings of the past in high fashion than a significant step into the future," she wrote.

Hoping that the upcoming big brands' virtual collections are going to live up to our expectations: looking forward to seeing Mugler, Courreges and Saint Laurent.

"It's completely out of touch. She says she never been to Capri, the collection is "inspired by Capri, or south of France, or whatever".

CHANEL UNVEILED THEIR VIRTUAL CRUISE COLLECTION: WE MISS THE ROCKET SHIPS

Mark Seliger is a Portrait master. The Texan photographer captured iconic photographs during his thirty-year career from his first pictures for Rolling Stones, then for GQ and Vanity Fair, to his personal collection. Mark Seliger made black and white portraits his signature between his series of political figures such as Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Malala or of celebrities including Billy Porter, Kim Kardashian and Leonardo Di Caprio. Mark Seliger's talent will also benefit the music world, with the most influential artists of their time. Below is a throwback to 10 iconic musicians' portraits. 

Born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1959, before moving to New York City in the 1980s, Seliger graduated from the Houston High School for Performing & Visual Arts and East Texas State University. He was the Chief Photographer of Rolling Stone magazine by 1992, traveling the globe and shooting for the publication more than 150 covers. 

Seliger has worked for Condé Nast since 2002 where he would regularly collaborate with Vanity Fair and GQ as well as Elle, Harper's Bazaar and Italian Vogue shooting campaigns for major fashion houses such as Chanel, Saint Laurent or Courreges. Think of Apple, Dom Perignon, Levi Strauss, Amazon, Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban and Rolex - the photographer has also been responsible for several unforgettable promotional campaigns. 

As for his striking portraits of celebrities, he says, "This is about trust. If you communicate well and report your intentions to them, they will respect you."

"Since the mid-1990s I have been working with the Stones and I probably photographed Keith Richards the most. He's a real gentleman, very wise and very intelligent. He's the best subject you're going to ever get: funny, sharp and engaged."

"The challenge of course is to do something unique because he's always depicted with a cigarette. He once said photographers wanted to kill him because we always ask him to smoke."

Kurt Cobain: "The blueness of his eyes had something very beautiful in it"

"During the Nevermind tour, I first photographed Nirvana in Australia, and it had been very unruly. Kurt arrived in a t-shirt that said "Corporate Magazines Still Suck" and I was quite distressed by what Rolling Stone would have thought. We did run the image as a cover, though, which meant he was very relaxed and cooperative with me the next time I met with Kurt."

"This shot was taken in Michigan, at Kalamazoo. My sister sent me the heads of those vintage dolls, and I bought some rose bushes; we built this little altar and let it deteriorate for a couple of days."

"I'm not entirely sure where my inspiration came from but I think it was from watching Nirvana's videos and listening to their lyrics, the sadness of Kurt's voice and the concern for life, death and decline."

"For doing the picture, Kurt was very spontaneous and there was something very beautiful about the blueness of his eyes and his dead stare. And, two months later, we got the tragic news he'd died. Since that, I have not looked at those photos for a long time."

“It’s really enjoyable because it takes the onus off of photographing just portraiture and actually building a story.”

10 ICONIC PORTRAITS OF MUSICIANS SHOT BY MARK SELIGER

How do you pick a decade's most important collections? The ones which have had a lasting impact? As far as runways are concerned, the 2010s started with New York's Spring 2010 shows in September 2009; they ended when haute couture shows wrapped up in Paris in the Fall of 2019. 

As for outcomes? Rei Kawakubo's minimalist manifesto of Comme des Garcons first collection on our list and the sharp match with a sustainability backstory that Sarah Burton has created at Alexander McQueen for 2019. That paints a picture of a ten-year shift from chic utilitarianism influenced by the Great Recession to resourceful elegance informed by climate change terrors. It was the years that produced the most news in the middle of the decade. 

No surprise, the list contains lots of new beginnings — the industry loves nothing more than a fresh start. But an era-defining, influencing swan song also made the cut. In our mix you will find career highs together with the collections that have changed the course of fashion — the silhouette of the clothes and the look of the models who wore them. If the 2010s were a decade of change, this list was nevertheless shaped and molded by the dominant forces of the era. Iconic labels edged out fierce independents, and male designers outnumbered females. But who knows for how long: Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy, Virginie Viard at Chanel - this is the story of the recent haute couture shows. 

Freedom of expression was always a thing for Rick Owens, but here he opened the door to a new chapter, liberating himself from the ancient rules of fashion for good and jumping into a new era of runway diversity in the process.

Here, our top 10 collections of the 2010s, in chronological order.

After much debate, the enthusiastic, idiosyncratic lists were whittled down to an essential, agreed-upon 10.

10 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLECTIONS OF THE 2010S

Last year, in a lavish display at the Grand Palais in Paris, Chanel presented their cruise collection with a set that transformed the cavernous space into a train platform, with the railways acting as the frontiers of the catwalk. There was Claudia Schiffer, and Keira Knightley too, applauding the candy-bright jackets that many fashion critics thought was a genius stroke from the new creative director (or in Chanel's vernacular, artistic director of the fashion follections) Virginie Viard. It had been a scene, as they say. 

There are really special things this year. Chanel made the decision in March to cancel their cruise show, which would have taken place in Capri – the perfect setting for a holiday collection, one might imagine. For a company that has in the past set their clothing collections against such backdrops as a rocket ship, a store, an airport, a circus, a man-made beach and a library, canceling it entirely is a first, and one that the brand hopes not to repeat. 

"It's a shame for everyone," says Chanel's global fashion president, Bruno Pavlovsky just days before the house's cruise collection will be presented as a series of online content entitled Balade en Méditerranée. Instead of a decadent set on the sun-drenched Italian island, the brand showed a range of silhouettes and videos on their web platforms on Monday, instead. 

"We'd been working on the collection and show for the past six months, we were so excited to go to Capri. One of the things about Capri that would have been so incredible is its natural beauty; the lights, the color, the Mediterranean's unique beauty, particularly at this time of year."

"The brands must decide what they plan to do. Any label can do whatever they want. But I think Paris has a good mutual interest in promoting the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Style [which is organizing Fashion Weeks]. Brands can decide not to participate but that will make life more difficult at the end of the day."

We are hoping to see Courreges and Mugler's online shows as soon as possible. We will keep you posted.

Pavlovsky: Our mindset is to be careful, we don’t want to go too fast. It’s not about celebrating so much but about getting back to something much easier, more normal, by September.

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