Luxury house CHANEL unveiled its Spring Summer 2023 Couture Collection, that was inspired by Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment at 31, rue Cambon, on January 24th, during the ongoing Paris Fashion Week. The collection explores the apartment’s bestiary, a series of objects, sculptures, and drawings representing lions, does, stags, birds and camels. Embroidered on short tweed suits and coat dresses, kittens, corgis, rabbits and swallows share the limelight with the does, stags or camellias emblematic of the House. For the season designer Virginie Viard also found inspiration in the poetry of majorettes. Set design is work of artist Xavier Veilhan, it features eleven monumental animals made of wood, cardboard and paper.
“The CHANEL suit borrows its codes from the female uniforms of parades and spectacles. Top hat, bow tie, white gloves, laced boots, satin cape, pleated skirt, jackets double-breasted or with tails, tuxedo shirt, sequins, short shorts, petticoats. Dresses and jumpsuits all in lightness and refinement, superpositions, transparencies, flounces, pleats, fine straps and repainted laces, are crafted 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 fairy parade, closes with the bride in a dress embroidered with swallows.” – from Chanel
