{"id":786834,"date":"2026-07-07T20:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786834\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T20:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:59:10","slug":"chanel-brings-beanstalk-to-catwalk-in-fairytale-paris-couture-show-chanel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/786834\/","title":{"rendered":"Chanel brings beanstalk to catwalk in fairytale Paris couture show | Chanel"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first model on the Chanel<\/a> catwalk was wearing a sheer mousseline skirt suit and carrying a tiny century-old leatherbound book of fairytales that once belonged to Coco Chanel herself. With the Lord of the Rings soundtrack booming through a stage set of giant parasol-scale poppies and lupins as tall as giraffes, the clothes narrated the stories in the pages. A row of buttons on the spine of a dress began with an ugly duckling, and ended with a swan. A Goldilocks minaudi\u00e8re handbag was fashioned in the shape of a golden sleeping bear. The lining of a jacket was hand-painted with a scene from Puss in Boots.<\/p>\n

A sheer skirt suit with embroidery. Photograph: WWD\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But Matthieu Blazy, holding the same book in his hands backstage after the show, told reporters that his favourite fairytale was the rags-to-riches story of Coco herself. \u201cShe climbed the ladder to find her golden goose, by making clothes for real women. Her clothes were never parodies. They were rooted in life,\u201d Chanel\u2019s creative director said.<\/p>\n

An opening look from the show. Photograph: Marc Piasecki\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A cast of women of all ages included Stephanie, a model who was celebrating her 50th birthday walking the Chanel catwalk in a red sequined dress, surely a fairytale way to mark that occasion. \u201cThat was a super-beautiful moment for us backstage,\u201d said Blazy. \u201c I love the way the older women move in the clothes, and I love the mentorship and conversation they have with the younger kids.\u201d The wedding dress that features in every couture show \u2013 bridal gowns making up a hefty chunk of orders \u2013 was demoted from finale position, so that the show closed with a sinewy little black dress that Blazy called a \u201crevenge\u201d dress. \u201cIt seemed like the right way to end the story, because Gabrielle [Coco] never got married.\u201d The simple black dress channelled her spirit.<\/p>\n

Stephanie marks her 50th birthday with a red sequined dress. Photograph: St\u00e9phane Cardinale\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love doing red carpet, dressing Teyana Taylor or Nicole Kidman, but for me fashion is about the adventure of the everyday. Fashion is not about the big \u2018wow\u2019 dress, it is clothes that you fold and put in your suitcase,\u201d he said. To celebrate the adventure of the everyday, the lining of a jacket was decorated with to-do reminders and supermarket shopping lists hand-embroidered by the Parisian house of Lesage on to squares of yellow silk, to look like Post-it notes.<\/p>\n

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The \u2018revenge\u2019 dress. Photograph: Marc Piasecki\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Beyond the whimsy, there was a clear fashion story here for the world beyond the tiny couture clientele. Sheer layers are an emerging trend, with worn-to-be-glimpsed sturdy knickers and bra tops worn under semi-transparent clothes. The silhouette is emphatically untucked, with the new version of a skirt suit a fluid skirt beneath a billowing blouse. Nostalgic pastel shades of lilac and mint are a breath of fresh air after seasons of minimal neutrals. In many of these directions, Chanel echoed the looks seen on Monday on Dior\u2019s haute couture catwalk.<\/p>\n

Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel\u2019s president of fashion, described it as \u201cthe best show ever\u201d in haute couture. \u201cThe storytelling behind this collection is stunning,\u201d he said. There is fairy dust around Chanel since Blazy\u2019s appointment, with boutiques packed. The appetite for a new era of Chanel is being seen in strong demand for the new, slouchier \u201c25\u201d bag, which is becoming as desirable to clients as the classic flap-closure shape.<\/p>\n

Pavlovsky\u2019s biggest challenge right now is finding and training the growing workforce in the Chanel ateliers. Despite the recent acquisition of the renowned Parisian shirtmakers Charvet, Pavlovsky insists Chanel has no plans to diversify into menswear. \u201cWe are not dressing men. We are not in hospitality; we are not opening Chanel restaurants. We are not trying to compete with Vuitton. We are not listed; we don\u2019t have the pressure to do everything. Everything we do is about fashion for women.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first model on the Chanel catwalk was wearing a sheer mousseline skirt suit and carrying a tiny…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-786834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}