

“In the ’90s they always seemed to be with pink tweed-ugh! For me it was horrible then, but now j’adore!” “Karl was always doing fake jeans,” recalled Viard, shuddering at the memory.

During an accessories fitting a couple of days before the show, Viard pointed out the crocheted effects she had worked on with braid company Bacus, and the spin on the bright spring pastel tweed suits-think of Chanel-clad Naomi, Linda, and Carla, shot by Steven Meisel for Vogue, March 1994-that she had given the twist of a longer skirt or jacket flap in back, suggesting a traditional tailcoat. The show also opened à la Karl Lagerfeld-who sent shock waves when he put Chanel-branded underwear as outerwear on the runway for spring 1993-with a black-and-white sequence of briefs, swimsuits, and sports bras, occasionally veiled in spangled black net pants or shown with above-the-knee skirts. Photography, after all, is in the DNA of the brand. Inez & Vinoodh also provided the playful videos (presented in an anteroom before entering the show space) that depicted the stars of Chanel’s model cabal-among them Lily-Rose Depp, Alma Jodorowsky, Rebecca Dayan, and Quannah Chasinghorse-turning the camera on them. “I wanted to recapture that emotion.” So this season Viard attempted to channel that energy and joy in a collection that not only referenced the era in the clothes, staging, and accessories (purses shaped like N★ bottles piratically flared Louis heels), but even the soundtrack: Witness George Michael’s anthemic “Freedom! ’90”-in a contemporary cover version by Christine and the Queens-getting the models in the party spirit.Īt the end of the raised runway, for instance, the photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, now deeply enmeshed in the Chanel world, played old-school show photographers, snapping the models who stopped to pose and preen for them and seemed to be having the time of their lives, flashing smiles and flicking hair rather than assuming the habitual look of sulky disdain. “I used to love the sound of flashbulbs going off at the shows in the ’80s,” designer Virginie Viard recalled in today’s Chanel show notes. (The front-row seats were still prized in fashion’s hierarchy, but generally gave one a fantastic view of the back of a photographer or a supermodel’s nostrils.) Back at the turn of the 1990s, as listeners to the podcast In Vogue: The 1990s will discover, supermodels came bounding down the high, raised runways exuding joie de vivre as they twirled and vamped for the photographers who had jostled for prime position, not only in the mosh pit at the end of the runway, but all along its length.
