Welcome home! Chanel Makes a Striking Comeback to the Grand Palais

After 4 years of renovation under the Grand Patronage of Chanel, the Grand Palais opened its doors to guests for the spring-summer 2025 catwalk show of the House. The main entrance, which now bears the name of Gabrielle Chanel, became an allusion to the door of the giant cage, which the palace personified. Standing in the middle of the huge hall beneath the glass roof of the Nave, one felt like a little sparrow, captured by beauty and elegance.

Renowned for its lavish runways and breathtaking settings (be it a rocket ship or the seashore), Chanel chose the grace, elegance and apparent simplicity of white to showcase its new collection, placing a huge white cage with an open door among the 2,000 seats for spectators.

The story, presented by the Creation Studio -they are working for the first time without their long-standing director Virginie Viard, who left the house in May, - is all about flying up in the air. At the centre of this cathedral of light, in the heart of the Nave, this gigantic aviary-esque space, an open, monumental birdcage has been placed as if by magic. One structure reflects and echoes the other. The small cage hosting a couple of birds that was given to Gabrielle Chanel by one of her seamstresses and that has been reinterpreted in a famous commercial for Coco perfume starring Vanessa Paradis and filmed in 1991 by the French director Jean-Paul Goude also comes to mind. The extraordinary dimensions of this décor-object, the grace of its lines, and even the immense spacing of its bars render it phantasmagorical.

Chairs and benches have been set out to resemble a park or a garden. Here, we can breathe, we can dream. So begins a ballet of ethereal liberty. Chiffon capes, slit skirts, embroidered transparent shirt dresses, wide-cut and fluid trousers, sequined and fringed jeans, and trench coats with a multicoloured feather print come together in a choreographic ode to delicacy, lightness and movement. The collection is a tribute to women who freed themselves from the cumbersome gaze of society, just like Gabrielle Chanel. This flight is dedicated to them. We think of the music-hall artist and literary figure Colette, to whom Gabrielle Chanel was a close friend, the garçonne movement that marked the Roaring Twenties, but also the aviatrixes who spoke out and helped change mentalities. Aviator jackets with Peter Pan collars, flight suits in black or white faille, suits with tone-on-tone tie-shape inserts, uniform dresses with white collars, total looks in pink or blue tweed, pastel knits, black skirt knitted as a tribute to the architecture of the venue and sparkling platform shoes: a wind of freedom blows through the collection.

In revisiting the House codes – the suit and the little black dress, tweed and jersey, the quilted bag and the two-tone shoes – the Creation Studio presents a Spring-Summer 2025 Ready-to-Wear collection in the colours of the day, of the night and the ever-changing sky... A soaring voyage in the Nave of the Grand Palais.

At the end of the fashion show, actress and singer Riley Keough, granddaughter of the king of rock and roll Elvis Presley, appeared on the catwalk. She performed the track “When Doves Cry”, the lead single of the sixth studio album of the singer Prince, produced in 1984. The singer sat on a swing in a huge cage, a nod to the ad film starring Paradis.

“People have always wanted to put me in cages: cages with cushions stuffed with promises, gilded cages, cages that I’ve touched looking away from. I never wanted any other than one I would build myself,” Coco Chanel famously said. As always, at Chanel, every symbol and every action has a deep philosophical meaning; a gesture of beauty and a source of inspiration. Now it’s for us to decide whether to live in a cage, fly like a free bird or strike a balance between freedom and captivity.

Courtesy: Chanel

Text: AN