January 5, 2024 |
On a floodlit roller rink in Los Angeles, Snoop Dogg is singing ‘Gin and Juice’. The smell of weed – a legal high, by the way, here in California – rises all the way from the freshly painted tarmac to the palm trees, mingling on its journey with the scent of sizzling onions from the burger trucks parked courtside.
This is not your grandmother’s Chanel. But this is what Chanel looks like now. Take a closer look at a gorgeous woman in a gold jacket, black bikini top and blue jeans, sipping date-night cocktails with her husband… isn’t that Margot Robbie? And wait, the blonde in the light pink knit mini dress? Paris Hilton. Marion Cotillard is chatting on the bleachers, Lucy Boynton is catching up with friends. Chanel has come to Hollywood and gone full Cali-girl. Not so much Chanel 2.0 as Chanel 90210.
A destination Cruise show is always a fashion moment, but Virginie Viard’s LA extravaganza was more of a high-stakes night than most. The opulent event, staged on a set built at the Paramount Pictures lot, came just a week after the bombastic Karl Lagerfeld-themed fancy dress ball of the Met Gala, which saw Jared Leto dressed as a six-foot Choupette. The Gala, held on the opening night of the Metropolitan Museum’s Lagerfeld retrospective A Line of Beauty was a reminder that his larger-than-life mythology still looms large, not just over Chanel but over all of fashion. Soon after the New York exhibition closes, another retrospective – this time on Coco herself – will open at the V&A in London. This is Chanel’s year. Viard’s job is to make sure that the fashion house of today and tomorrow can hold its own against the legends of Karl and Coco.
One of the hallmarks of a true contender is an ability to raise their game when the stakes are high. Viard, whose aesthetic has mostly lent into refinement and understatement since she took over from her old boss, came out of the blocks all guns blazing for a show that proved her Chanel can be every bit as fun and unpredictable as the brand has ever been. Staging the Cruise show in the US a week after the Met Gala, when she might have retreated to the safe distance of somewhere chic and Mediterranean, was a strong statement. The show was timed to coincide with the opening of a vast new modernist boutique on Rodeo Drive, the largest Chanel store in America, which features a giant string of pearls sculpture by Jean-Michel Othoniel, winding like Jack’s beanstalk through a four-storey atrium. Chanel, second only in scale and revenue to Louis Vuitton, is in the kind of rude financial health which makes 1,000-seat one-night-only fashion spectacles possible.
And so it was that Chanel came to Hollywood, and the crowd went wild. In the week leading up to the show, all around the city, giant billboards went up proclaiming it was happening over ‘One Night Only’. In a prime spot on the Paramount lot, a sunken space under the famed water tower, which can convert to a gigantic tank to shoot swimming pool or even ocean scenes, this was a blockbuster, must-see premiere and a see-and-be-seen event. With their invitation, every one of the 980 guests received a personalised mini-billboard, emblazoned with the names Margot Robbie, Kristen Stewart and other Chanel starlets who would be in attendance, but with the guest’s own name given top billing. Feel that main character energy, baby.
The real stars of the show, of course, were the 71 looks in the collection. The catwalk was a roller-skating rink, with squishy black sofas and coffee tables for the front row and chic milk-white custom-made bleachers with first-class leg room for everyone else. A giant screen played a film by Inez & Vinoodh of the actress and model Alma Jodorowsky shadow-boxing with Chanel-branded dumbbells, channelling a young Cindy Crawford with her magnificent side swept mane, thickly glossed pout and baby-lioness energy. First look? A boucle-tweed two-piece. But most definitely not a skirt suit. Instead, sparkle-flecked black wool running short sworn with matching leg warmers, teamed with a racer back bra top and gleaming white trainers. Imagine you got dressed in Chanel’s Rue Cambon flagship, then hopped on a plane, took a stroll down Venice Beach, stopping for a blow-dry in Beverly Hills along the way, and you get the vibe. This was the high-energy sun-kissed sex appeal of Californian beach culture, not the rarefied glamour of the classic silver screen. Cut-out swimsuits and mini kaftans were dolled up with Hollywood Walk of Fame star earrings and a minaudière clutch in the shape of a VW campervan.
A Chanel Cruise catwalk show lasts only 20 minutes, but for those lucky enough to get golden tickets it is, well, a whole trip. Rewind to the start and our motion picture begins 24 hours before Snoop. We open, in classic cinematic style, with a wide shot: the terrace of the Maybourne Beverly Hills, where a cocktail dinner is being served to guests the night before the show. The Maybourne is a gorgeous pink stucco wedding cake of a hotel, with a sweeping circular drive, where every terrace is punctuated with immaculately manicured topiary and invariably dotted with celebrities. The trellises are strung with jasmine, as if the night sky was perfumed with No. 5; twinkling fairy lights catch the stars that begin to pop as the blue sky darkens.
There are trays of champagne flutes, the tiniest, most delicious canapés and giant, fresh crab claws, but the heat of the action is clustered around a caviar bar.
Chanel’s assembled guests, many newly disembarked from long flights, are finding that fresh blinis generously laden with the fishy delicacy make a reviving dinner, especially when washed down with the dolly-sized but punchy vodka martinis being handed out alongside them. The subjects of chat range from last week’s coronation and the just-announced news of Tom Ford’s departure from fashion (much reminiscing all round) to glowing reviews of the new hot pilates place around the corner from Rodeo Drive, where some of the more intrepid editors have been trying out the exercise in a room heated to 100°F. It also won’t surprise you to hear that 10’s very own Sophia was, as always, at the centre of the party. (In her Instagram Story that night, she posted a video pointing out that I was double-parked, spotlighting that I had a martini in each hand. In my defence, I would like to reiterate that they were tiny.)
The next morning there is a flurry of messages on the British editors’ WhatsApp group chat. We are hiking to Griffith Observatory (where Rebel Without a Cause was filmed, of course) up in the Hollywood Hills, but no one, it seems, has packed quite right for the excursion. It is surprisingly chilly for LA in May. Will we freeze in shorts? Will Birkenstocks do? Sophia and Chanel comms supremo Jo Allison gracefully swerve the motley-dressed hiking crew, heading instead to gallery The Broad, where six of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms have come to California, alongside the Warhols and Basquiats in the permanent collection. The rest of us are driven to the foot of the Hollywood Hills to be met by our hike leader, who turns out to be Kaia Gerber’s personal trainer because, well, that’s how Chanel rolls. Newly motivated by the discovery that Cindy’s daughter does this trail regularly, as does that other Californian princess, Meghan, we march up the hill at a clip, stopping only to take selfies with the iconic Hollywood sign in the backdrop.
Time for a well-earned lunch, so after a quick change back at our hotel we head to that most legendary of LA spots, the Chateau Marmont. Ina leafy secret courtyard, a West Coast feast of fancy salads – butter lettuce and avocado, grilled chicken and pink radishes – is served on a shared table, and we all pile up our plates. Double espressos to finish, with bowls of berries and cream. A whistle-stop tour of a few local favourite vintage stores throws up some new fashion trophies (everyone is jealous when our fellow writer Susie Lau finds an excellent Prada skirt) and then it’s back to the hotel to glam up for the show.
Time to zoom in for a close-up on that catwalk, because the beauty look created for the show was a scene-stealer. To accompany Viard’s glossy hotpants, sequins and ombre tints, hairstylist James Pecis dreamt up a blow-out for ladies who lunch on the beach, or at the Chateau: sideswept, sultry, cheekbone-defining. Make-up artist Lisa Butler buffed cheeks to a coral glow and brushed lips with sweet peach gloss. There was a strong synergy with two of the leading ladies in the house. The flame-coloured tumbling locks of Riley Keough, star of the backstage-romance-epic Daisy Jones & the Six, were unmissable in the front row.
And, of course, Barbie herself was in the house. The dazzling smile of Margot Robbie brought Barbiecore to life, while another poster girl for the same vibe shift came in the sugar-pink figure of Paris Hilton, making her Chanel show debut. (Later, we hear, Paris DJ’d at the after-after party at Chateau Marmont; Leo DiCaprio swung by.) The late arrival of Snoop, who, at the last possible moment, took over a section of the front row for an entourage, dripping in Chanel, that included his wife, daughter and four-year-old granddaughter, kind of gave the game away about who the Special Surprise Performance might be. The catwalk show ended with the promise of the night yet to come tangible in the air. The aroma of food trucks drew guests away from the roller-rink catwalk to the street party-styled aftershow, where silver Airstream trucks handed out laid-back snacks. Models emerging from the backstage area joined the queue for pizza slices, still in their sunset-pink tweeds and skate-park finery. Lucy Boynton made a beeline for the sushi; everyone Instagrammed the cute mini-burgers.
A burst of fireworks on the big screen caught our attention next, before music legend Nile Rodgers took to the stage, teasing the crowd that “something very special is about to happen”. The unmistakable opening– La-da-da-di-dahh – and Snoop is up there performing his Dre collab The Next Episode, then Drop It Like It’s Hot, before dedicating Beautiful to his wife, who is dancing side of stage. Anderson.Paak joins Snoop on stage to perform Smokin’ Out the Window, and then Chanel-branded skates are handed out to guests who are game enough to join the roller-dancing troupe who are spinning, gliding and weaving figures of eight.
It is 16 years since Karl Lagerfeld staged a show in an aircraft hangar in Santa Monica airport, in the early days of the destination Cruise show. But Chanel’s history with California goes back nearly a century, when producer Samuel Goldwyn, who believed that women went to the cinema to see how other women dressed, hired Gabrielle Chanel to dress his actresses, both on and off screen. In 1931, the designer travelled to the US, starting her trip in New York, where she immediately became the toast of the town. At The Pierre hotel, which feted her with a reception, she held court in her suite while the New Yorker and the New York Times sent reporters to interview her. Coco’s chic way with a string of pearls was much admired. From New York, she travelled by luxury train to Los Angeles, where she was once again welcomed by the A-list. (Gloria Swanson, who later won an Oscar for Sunset Boulevard, became a close friend.) The commercial collaboration with Goldwyn, which lasted for three films, was only a partial success – Chanel’s pared-back refinement proved a little understated for the American box office – but the trip embedded the iconography of the house of Chanel in the mythology of California, where it has remained ever since. Who can forget Marilyn Monroe’s answer to the question of what she wore in bed?
Taken from 10+ Issue 6 – VISIONARY, WOMEN, REVOLUTION – out now. Order your copy here.
CHANEL CRUISE 2024: LA STORY
Photographer MAGNUS UNNAR
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text JESS CARTNER-MORLEY
Models MAHANY PERY at The Industry, YILAN HUA at New York Model Management, LIZA KAROL at Heroes Model Management, ARNELLE SLOT and ROZANNE VERDUIN at Photogenics LA
Date MAY 9, 2023
Location LOS ANGELES
Designer VIRGINIE VIARD
Hair JAMES PECIS
Make-up LISA BUTLER
Casting AURELIE DUCLOS
