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 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 vogue home’s inventive director. Though she principally stayed out of the highlight, Viard labored intently with Lagerfeld as his right-hand girl throughout his lengthy and influential tenure on the maison. In 2000, she turned the director of Chanel’s creation studio, and was put answerable 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 girl, after founder Gabrielle Chanel, to steer the model. Viard spent the following 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 response to WWD, the model’s ready-to-wear enterprise multiplied beneath Viard’s tenure; it grew 23 % within the final 12 months. Industrial success apart, the 62-year-old designer has additionally confronted lots of criticism from the net vogue crowd for not measuring as much as her predecessor. Her Chanel Cruise 2025 assortment, which marks her final assortment for the model, acquired many destructive feedback on social media. In response to the information, vogue editor Suzy Menkes wrote, “Virginie must be congratulated, not reviled, for preserving Karl’s flag flying. And with an curiosity in artwork and music, she will be able to discover a extra enticing life than being criticised for not being Mr Lagerfeld.”
Which begs the query: who can be the following Mr. Lagerfeld?
Hedi Slimane is alleged to be a high decide, in response to trade insiders. In April, vogue journalist Dana Thomas reported in her publication that Slimane, who’s at present the inventive director of Celine, is headed to Chanel. In response to 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 cultured tackle ‘60s stylish: fashions wore A-line attire, skirt fits and pearl necklaces. Simply as Lagerfeld remodeled Chanel into the luxurious powerhouse it’s at this time, 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 couple 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 12 months, are each introduced up in dialogue of Viard’s successor throughout the vogue trade.
Slimane, nevertheless, 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, may simply be the precise match for Chanel.
This text was first seen on Grazia.sg.
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