There was a fashion moment in the early 1970s when nostalgia-crazed kids started to escape into vintage style. Fashion frequently looks back when times are bleak (does this sound familiar?) but the cultural upshot, circa 1972, was wildly positive, fizzing into Glam Rock, David Bowie, languid attenuated maxis, glittery things and platforms for all. Virginie Viard smartly pinpointed that “crossroads of the ’70s and the ’20s” at Chanel. It took her to the boardwalk at Deauville, dressing models in huge straw sun hats with turned-back brims, tons of maxi-things and suede platform boots: “the silhouette of David Bowie, and the magnetism of stars walking on the sand,” as the press release had it.
It says a lot for Viard that her collection—certainly the best she’s done—picked up the spirit of Gabrielle Chanel in the ’20s, infused it with some of the retro-languid influence of Karl Lagerfeld’s ’70s, and brought its relevance into focus under a digital landscape projection of the beach at Deauville. Also: Her collection wasn’t overshadowed by the magnetism of Brad Pitt and Penélope Cruz in a wraparound wall projection of a new short film (view it here), trailered beforehand.
Gabrielle Chanel started her business as a milliner in a shop in Deauville, the fashionable French seaside resort. Hence the symbolic connection Viard drew with the turned-back brims of the the sun hats. Her translations of Chanel’s earliest, revolutionary jersey signatures flowed into state-of-the-art modern knitwear in multiple versions of belted cardigan pajama-like trouser suits, and made sense of the ease of the house tweeds in long-line coats and, later, the fluttery, vaguely ’30s-via-’70s chiffon prints.
It felt, for the first time, as if Viard had found an unforced connection with the original intention of Chanel—to make chic clothes easy for contemporary women.
