It’s the top of an period: Virginie Viard has stepped down from her function as inventive director of Chanel.
The French luxurious model has shared the next assertion concerning Viard’s departure: “Chanel confirms the departure of Virginie Viard after a wealthy collaboration of 5 years as Creative Director of Vogue collections, throughout which she was capable of renew the codes of the Home whereas respecting the inventive heritage of Chanel, and virtually thirty years inside the Home.”
Viard had joined Chanel in 1987, when Karl Lagerfeld was the French trend home’s inventive director. Though she principally stayed out of the highlight, Viard labored intently with Lagerfeld as his right-hand lady throughout his lengthy and influential tenure on the maison. In 2000, she turned the director of Chanel’s creation studio, and was put in command of overseeing Chanel’s many collections for high fashion, ready-to-wear and equipment.
Following Lagerfeld’s demise in 2019, Viard was chosen as his successor at Chanel, changing into solely the second lady, after founder Gabrielle Chanel, to guide the model. Viard spent the subsequent 5 years honouring Lagerfeld’s legacy, whereas additionally injecting the model with a way of freedom, lightness, in addition to a rock and roll edge that mirrored her music tastes.
In line with WWD, the model’s ready-to-wear enterprise multiplied beneath Viard’s tenure; it grew 23 p.c within the final yr. Industrial success apart, the 62-year-old designer has additionally confronted plenty of criticism from the web trend crowd for not measuring as much as her predecessor. Her Chanel Cruise 2025 assortment, which marks her final assortment for the model, obtained many damaging feedback on social media. In response to the information, trend editor Suzy Menkes wrote, “Virginie needs to be congratulated, not reviled, for maintaining Karl’s flag flying. And with an curiosity in artwork and music, she will discover a extra enticing life than being criticised for not being Mr Lagerfeld.”
Which begs the query: who can be the subsequent Mr. Lagerfeld?
Hedi Slimane is claimed to be a high decide, in keeping with trade insiders. In April, trend journalist Dana Thomas reported in her publication that Slimane, who’s presently the inventive director of Celine, is headed to Chanel. In line with The Enterprise of Vogue, the Celine designer has been locked in “a thorny contract negotiation with proprietor LVMH that might result in the designer’s departure from the model”.
At Celine, Slimane has maintained a complicated French aesthetic for his womenswear collections, populated with covetable tweed jackets and leather-based baggage with chain straps. His most up-to-date ladies’s assortment, for fall/winter 2024, supplied a refined tackle ‘60s stylish: fashions wore A-line clothes, skirt fits and pearl necklaces. Simply as Lagerfeld reworked Chanel into the posh powerhouse it’s immediately, Slimane has additionally expanded Celine’s choices to incorporate a perfume assortment and a magnificence line, each outlined by his imaginative and prescient for the model.
Chanel additionally has a number of different choices to contemplate for its inventive director place: Pierpaolo Piccioli, who exited Valentino in March, and Sarah Burton, who left her high put up at Alexander McQueen final yr, are each introduced up in dialogue of Viard’s successor inside the trend trade.
Slimane, nonetheless, stays a robust contender, and never only for his understanding of French stylish that lies on the very coronary heart of Chanel. On the helm of Celine, and at Saint Laurent earlier than that, Slimane has showcased his enterprise acumen and technical prowess as a clothier, each of that are qualities that Lagerfeld had demonstrated at Chanel. Lagerfeld himself was a fan of Slimane: he famously revealed that he misplaced weight to suit into the thin fits that Slimane designed for Dior’s menswear label within the early 2000s.
Slimane, in some ways, would possibly simply be the best match for Chanel.
This text was first seen on Grazia.sg.
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