At Chanel, Cosmopolitan Nerds Wear Flip-Flops With Tweed
In the series “What I Loved Yesterday,” Harper’s Bazaar editors highlight one standout look from the previous day at Paris Fashion Week.
Two seasons ago, fashion entered its flop era—as in flip-flop. Models at the Row wore the contentious sandal with leather opera gloves, and at Burberry they were styled with velvet off-the-shoulder gowns. Before our eyes, the anti-status shoe became luxury adjacent. In a world where the word chic is thrown around to describe just about anything, this act of styling a zany little fit with a simple rubber flop felt truly, absolutely, actually chic. And now they’re back at Chanel.
At Chanel’s Spring 2024 show, a significant number of the models wore a pair of flip-flops with the signature crystal-embellished interlocking C logo perched on a singular strap. It’s the kind of thing you see walk down the runway and just know hundreds of people are mentally adding to their wish lists. It almost shouldn’t make sense that the shoes you wear while running to the bodega are now marked with the signature Chanel logo that has come to define the kind of glitzy life in which you’d never have to actually run errands. (You’d have a private car for that!) And in that paradox lies their appeal.
Personally, I couldn’t stop think about the first couple of looks, which featured the flip-flop worn with long tweed coats and large thick-rim glasses. It felt almost nerdy, which is a word I’ve never used to describe Chanel. In films, Chanel has come to dress the Barbies of the world—quite literally—not their in-need-of-a-makeover counterparts. And of course these women weren’t actually nerds—they were models walking the Chanel show. But it felt like the first time I could start to see a new character emerge in Virginie Viard’s universe.
Someone pointed out to me after the show that the tweed coats looked reminiscent of the house dresses the bourgeoisie used to wear. And sure, maybe that’s true. But today this kind of conservative dress worn with geeky accessories like big glasses and flip-flops has come to define a lifestyle that’s not necessarily cosmopolitan. And I love Chanel showing how fabulous it is to sometimes get a little dorky with it.
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