A l’Opéra: Chanel Autumn-Winter 2024/25 Haute Couture Collection

Chanel's couture shows are renowned for their unique choice of location, concept, and limited guest list. For the presentation of the Autumn-Winter 2024/25 Haute Couture Collection, guests received theatre binoculars in a signature box with the famous logo as a subtle hint. For the first time, Chanel  decided to play with their show location, cheating on the iconic Grand Palais and its substitute le Grand Palais Ephemere. The show took place in the halls of the Palais Garnier, and there is a whole story behind it. As a Major Patron of the Opéra National de Paris since 2023, Patron of the Ballet de l'Opéra since 2021 and Patron of the dance season’s Opening Gala since 2018, Chanel is deeply involved in the life of the prestigious institution. Its history, associated with that of the discipline, the avant-garde ballets of yesterday and today, and intimately linked, in its very creation, to that of movement, has attested to this for over a hundred years. With a tutu, Pierrot outfits, nods to the ballets Le Train Bleu (1924) and Apollon Musagète (1928) – for which Gabrielle Chanel created the revolutionary costumes.

The Opéra Garnier is a hotspot of performance and elegance, where everything is about glances and putting oneself on display. Sophisticated, luxurious, and theatrical, the collection reveals itself in the outside corridors surrounding the auditorium, transformed for the occasion into red velvet opera boxes with a set design by the French cinema director Christophe Honoré.

Here, the worlds of Haute Couture and Opéra mingle. Feathers, cabochons, tassels and embroidered flowers, precious braids, lacquered jersey, silky velvet, duchesse satin, supple tweeds, illusion tulle and taffeta: opulent materials that delicately rustle. The volumes are diaphanous, the sleeves puffed, and the flounces pleated. Richly embroidered, the collection imbues the House codes with a romantic twist. A Chanel suit with box pleats revisited in burgundy tweed trimmed with white satin, a black corduroy tuxedo and a white blouse with an embroidered plastron, a black suit with a long culotte and a short, fitted jacket with shoulders swathed in black feathers, dance among long coats, voluminous capes and evening gowns, evoking a modernised stage tradition and a certain science of pageantry.

Matte, glossy, lacquered: light reigns supreme. A palette of black, gold, silver, ivory, fuchsia, pale pink, and celadon hints at the most splendid of soirées. In this institution, we see, we are seen, we experience emotions. So did the guests of Chanel and numerous brand ambassadors Keira Knightley, Naomi Campbell, Vanessa Paradis, Angèle, Zhou Xun, Michelle Williams, Caroline de Maigret, Greta Gerwig, Sadie Sink, and Hannah O’Neill, among others.

It's also a place for dance. The Fall-Winter 2024/25 Haute Couture collection includes dresses for divas, princesses and brides, leading us into a world where clothes dress the space as much as they conquer it.

The first show since Chanel's creative director Virginie Viard stepped down abruptly at the beginning of June, showcases the technical expertise, virtuosity and sensitivity of the Chanel Haute Couture ateliers where some 150 people work in six ateliers at 31, rue Cambon, next to the Chanel  Fashion Creation Studio. Contrary to tradition, no one from the team took a bow at the end of the show. It seems the Maison is not in a hurry to choose and appoint a new creative director, although ultimately everybody knows that it is inevitable.

Copyright: Chanel

Text: AN