It’s the tip of an period: Virginie Viard has stepped down from her position 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 Inventive Director of Vogue collections, throughout which she was in a position to renew the codes of the Home whereas respecting the inventive heritage of Chanel, and nearly thirty years throughout the Home.”
Viard had joined Chanel in 1987, when Karl Lagerfeld was the French style home’s inventive director. Though she principally stayed out of the highlight, Viard labored carefully with Lagerfeld as his right-hand lady throughout his lengthy and influential tenure on the maison. In 2000, she grew to become the director of Chanel’s creation studio, and was put accountable for overseeing Chanel’s many collections for high fashion, ready-to-wear and equipment.
Following Lagerfeld’s dying in 2019, Viard was chosen as his successor at Chanel, turning 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 keeping with WWD, the model’s ready-to-wear enterprise multiplied below Viard’s tenure; it grew 23 p.c within the final 12 months. Industrial success apart, the 62-year-old designer has additionally confronted loads of criticism from the web style crowd for not measuring as much as her predecessor. Her Chanel Cruise 2025 assortment, which marks her final assortment for the model, acquired many detrimental feedback on social media. In response to the information, style editor Suzy Menkes wrote, “Virginie ought to be congratulated, not reviled, for conserving 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 alleged to be a prime choose, in response to trade insiders. In April, style journalist Dana Thomas reported in her publication that Slimane, who’s at the moment the inventive director of Celine, is headed to Chanel. In keeping with The Enterprise of Vogue, the Celine designer has been locked in “a thorny contract negotiation with proprietor LVMH that would result in the designer’s departure from the model”.
At Celine, Slimane has maintained a classy French aesthetic for his womenswear collections, populated with covetable tweed jackets and leather-based baggage with chain straps. His most up-to-date girls’s assortment, for fall/winter 2024, provided a refined tackle ‘60s stylish: fashions wore A-line attire, skirt fits and pearl necklaces. Simply as Lagerfeld reworked Chanel into the luxurious powerhouse it’s as we speak, 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 just a few different choices to think about for its inventive director place: Pierpaolo Piccioli, who exited Valentino in March, and Sarah Burton, who left her prime submit at Alexander McQueen final 12 months, are each introduced up in dialogue of Viard’s successor throughout the style trade.
Slimane, nonetheless, stays a powerful 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 dressmaker, 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 fitting match for Chanel.
This text was first seen on Grazia.sg.
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