Chanel brings casual seaside elegance to the French capital
This season, we are breaking down the spring/summer 2024 collections with a new franchise, The Fashion Week Cheat Sheet. After speaking to the designers about their inspiration, their hero pieces, the faces on the catwalk and the names on the front row, we present everything you need to know about SS24.
This season, Virginie Viard brought the sunny seaside to the Grand Palais, where she presented a collection that was inspired by a beautiful modernist villa that belonged to friends of Coco Chanel.
Presenting raffia bags, flip flops, swimsuits, robes, top-to-toe denim and plenty of prints, it was a casual, relaxed and carefree collection that embodied the spirit of a seaside holiday.
Below, discover more about Chanel’s spring/summer 2024 collection – and, for more from Paris Fashion Week, head here.
Theme and inspiration
“This collection is an ode to liberty and to movement, and tells a story that has its origins in the gardens of the villa Noailles,” Viard said of Chanel SS24. The designer referenced the property – which was designed by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1923 for Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, friends of Coco Chanel’s – which sits up in the hills of Hyères in southern France.
“Facing south, the villa's volumes and outdoor spaces – from its cubist chequered garden to its sunken flower beds – light up the SS24 collection with an intense vitality,” the show notes read. “The exhilaration of light and colour, the profusion of geometric patterns, the play of contrasting asymmetries, patchworks, lines, checks and stripes give rhythm to a collection that sets out its own idea of elegance and insouciance.”
These prints featured throughout the collection, while silhouettes were easy and breezy, heels were flat and everything was styled with a relaxed attitude.
“Sophistication and informality, the tweed throughout the collection, sportswear and lace: I tried to bring one thing and its opposite together in the coolest way possible,” Viard explained. “And the gardens and swimming pool of the villa Noailles, that exceptional setting, lend themselves to that rather well.”
Hero products
Chanel flip flops will no doubt be a coveted item next season, as will the perfect checkered prints, deck-chair stripes, statement sunglasses with gold chains and that camera bag.
Who was there?
Paris Hilton, Brie Larson, Emilia Clarke, Usher and Camille Morrone were among the guests on the front row, while Gigi Hadid walked the runway.
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