On the Last Day of Paris Fashion Week, A Clever Chanel Show

Designers often like to hide their clues about a collection in plain sight. Think of the bunches of white lilies on Prada’s runway for a show that drew on weddings. Or the chocolate-brown-spotted, pale-green carpeting at Bottega Veneta, based on a gelato flavor, for a collection about the Italian custom of parading. The secret to Virginie Viard’s ultrasweet clothes for Chanel was also out front — in the giant camellia sculpture in the middle of her circular runway on Tuesday, the last day of the fall shows.

Not the camellia, per se, which has long been a Chanel motif, used as fashion trim and for packaging. Rather, the black-and-white video images of Nana Komatsu, a Japanese actress and model, played at the entrance to the show and then on the creamy petals of the sculpture. Created by the photographers Inez & Vinoodh, the video — about a Japanese girl in Paris — was based on William Klein’s 1966 cult film Where Are You, Polly Maggoo? In a way, Polly was the original Emily in Paris. But who are Chanel’s younger and aspirant customers more likely to think of when they see beautiful Nana in a black velvet shorts suit adorned with camellias? Dear old Polly? Or the popular Netflix series?

Chanel
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Chanel

In that sense, Viard’s show was clever. The storyline helps account for the girlish amounts of frippery: the overload of camellias on shoes, in knitwear designs, as an almost asteroidal explosion on a black bouclé jacket; the white feathery puffs that dot black jackets and…