September 13, 2024 |
When Chanel announced it would show in Marseille atop a brutalist block of flats, eyebrows were raised. The seaside city has a tough reputation and a former social housing building isn’t the most natural habitat for the double-C crowd. But as its previous destination shows in Dakar and Manchester proved, the famed French brand is keen to break out of the gilded salons of Paris, forge new connections and flex its cultural muscles.
This show would also take on a special significance. We didn’t know at the time that it would be Virginie Viard’s last one as artistic director of fashion at Chanel. Just a few weeks later, news would break of her shock departure from the house, where she’d spent more than 30 years.
Oblivious to the internal machinations of the brand, we got on with discovering Marseille through a Chanel lens and, over the course of three days, found that there’s more to the place than its grit. France’s second-largest city has a vivid creative scene, with its music, art and dance reverberating through the wider culture. As for Chanel’s rooftop location, Cité Radieuse is no ordinary block of flats. Designed by Le Corbusier in 1947 and completed in 1952, it’s one of the most important buildings of the 20th century and a designated Unesco World Heritage Site. Built as a “machine for living”, with a nursery, supermarket, doctor’s surgery, café, hotel and galleries, its egalitarian “streets in the sky” concept revolutionised how people lived, just as Coco Chanel, a contemporary of Le Corbusier, revolutionised the way they dressed.
The day before
Does someone pre-warn the BA staff in advance of a cruise show trip? “Psst! Uncork the champers and make sure you’ve got plenty of vegetarian options. The fashion pack are on the way.”“How do you spot them?”“Look for the double Cs.” It’s take-off time and the queue for Group 1 boarding is a jostle of quilted flap bags, squishy 22 sacks and tweedy little totes. Group Zero – reserved for people who fly even more than fashion’s gold card holders (e.g. Avril Mair) – has boarded already and consists of one middle-aged man in chinos who was settled snugly (or was it smugly?) into his front row seat by the time the Chanel gang got to theirs. How do you like that?
After we touch down in Marseille, our car speeds past the docks, with its container ships and cruise liners, on the way to the majestic InterContinental hotel, which looks out over the harbour. Before dinner there’s just time to whizz up to our rooms, where we find, among the welcome gifts, a set of Chanel boules and a special box
of Jamie Hawkesworth’s Viard-commissioned portraits of Marseille’s citizens bathed in golden Mediterranean light. With the south of France mood set, we head out to a vegetarian banquet prepared by a Michelin-famed chef in the grounds of the city’s Château Borély. Once the home of a grand family, it’s now a museum of decorative arts and fashion. We tour its salons, which are stuffed with priceless 18th-century porcelain, paintings and clothes (including several pieces from Coco’s personal wardrobe), before heading to two long banqueting tables to feast. The Brits are sat together and soon start swapping notes on the locale. The Guardian’s Jess Cartner-Morley (who always does her research) tells us about an incredible local hardware store, Maison Empereur, that’s like a cross between The Conran Shop and B&Q where you can buy everything from door handles, brackets and hinges to chic French workwear, stylish tableware and huge blocks of the olive oil soap this region is famous for. There’s a sliver of free time tomorrow. We could work in our hotel rooms or go to a museum, but we owe it to the local economy to go mad in that shop.
Show day
It’s the morning of the cruise show and ominous dark clouds have blown in on the Mistral, turning Marseille’s blue skies grey. The show is scheduled to take place that morning on the open-air rooftop of Cité Radieuse, but will Chanel be the latest brand to be hit by the curse of the cruise monsoon? Its unflappable PRs Jo, Teresa and Harriet are serenely confident it will go ahead as planned. But then again, serene confidence is their natural MO (panic is not chic and not a Chanel option). After breakfast we visit an exhibition at Fort Saint-Jean featuring work by local artists in collaboration with Chanel’s 19M ateliers – its specialist craft houses that make everything from the double-C buttons to the embroidery, costume jewellery and signature camellias. It will run for several weeks after today’s show as part of the brand’s commitment to the city.
Then we jump in a fleet of vans and head to the 8th arrondissement, where Le Corbusier’s landmark building stands. Designed to ease the city’s postwar housing crisis, it’s still home to more than 1,000 people (though the flats were privatised long ago – picture France’s version of the Barbican). As we wind through the surrounding green parkland, the brutalist beauty’s primary-coloured balconies wink down at us. We’re ushered into a lift along with some residents who look a little bemused at the incoming Chanel crowd. The show is on the roof, but for the hour before we explore the building’s indoor streets. There are galleries, a café, hotel rooms and an artist in residence in one of the flats. I walk through the halls, queue for a coffee, browse the galleries and note that the building has aged spectacularly well. It’s lived-in but not tired. Built to last. The place has a special atmosphere, which has nothing to do with Lily-Rose Depp, who I see dazzling in a tiny floral mini skirt and daring crop top. It thrills with light, space, warmth and community. The egalitarian, utopian spirit in which it was built cascades down through the decades, bringing a sense of optimism with it. Walking its corridors, built as ideal homes for ordinary people, you understand that great design – created with care and made to last – is truly life-enhancing.
Viard felt it too. “You couldn’t ask for a better backdrop to a runway show than the Cité Radieuse,” she says of the venue for her cruise 24/25 collection. You could have asked for better weather, though. On the roof we huddle under clear umbrellas, ready for the worst, but the rain miraculously holds off (although a second show, later that afternoon, has to take place inside the building’s “streets in the sky”). As Jean-Michel Jarre’s symphonic, euphoric electronica play over the speakers, Viard’s models, framed by the striking geometric roof structures, takes to the concrete communal space atop this Le Corbusier masterpiece.
Speaking of designs that stand the test of time, the stylistic freedom Chanel gave women still resonates, particularly with Viard, who brings a relatable sense of practicality and ease. For cruise, that means Chanel hoodies peeking out from beneath vivid green tweed suits (cut above the knee for ease of movement), alongside sweatshirt dresses, silver leather zip tops with matching mini skirts, towelling flip- flops and a white scuba swimsuit that seems to sum up the sporty, daytime dash of the collection. Viard knows that the Chanel girl covets a great hoodie and hers come elongated into mini dresses, their gleaming front pockets embroidered with colourful grid motifs inspired by the modernist architecture all around us.
“The sun, architecture, music and dance: Marseille also has a very strong sense of freedom. I was inspired by the codes of lifestyle, of everyday life and by all the things that invite movement. The sea and the wind made me want to play with wetsuits,” she explains of her action-packed inspiration. There is whimsy, too, and lashings of handcrafting that pays tribute to the sea. Quirky and playful embroideries depicting fish, fishing nets, shells and shellfish-decorated dresses, suit jackets, wispy blouses and little vest tops. A series of dresses in ivory-ladder lace and broderie anglaise were inspired by the nightgowns Viard would buy as a teenager when she was scouring vintage markets in the South of France. “Marseille is a city that puts me in touch with my emotions,” she says. “I tried to capture its power of attraction, its breath of fresh air, and convey the energy that reigns there.”
There is no hint that this is her swansong. Succeeding Karl Lagerfeld after his death in 2019, she stepped into the role at the most difficult time, bringing a fresh sense of youth and wardrobe reality to the storied house, but always sprinkling it with Chanel stardust.
After a delicious fish lunch by the crashing waves of the Mediterranean, the English crew has worked up an appetite for shopping and heads in convoy to the historic Maison Empereur (established in 1827), where we lose our minds among the pots, crockery, workwear, soaps, candles, traditional crocheted bedspreads and tableware. We leave, more than two hours later, clutching our bags of bounty, including thin bristly brushes with long, wangy metal handles that Charlotte Stockdale has encouraged everyone to buy. “They’re for cleaning behind radiators,” she says with perfect logic before explaining the unique, sleep-easy satisfaction of knowing that your radiators are totally dust-free.
We spend the night on top of another striking building, the Mucem, aka the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (which was designed by Rudy Ricciotti, who also created Chanel’s 19M building in Paris). We feast on a fabulous French buffet. The long, central table heaves with fresh local cheeses, meats and vegetables, as well as an oozy custard bread that is, quite honestly, life-changing. Viard is there, surrounded by friends and colleagues. She looks happy. There’s no suggestion that this is her goodbye. As the light fades, Marseille’s finest DJs and musicians keep everyone dancing long after the sun goes down.
Taken from Issue 73 of 10 Magazine – RISING, RENEW, RENAISSANCE – on newsstands September 18. Pre-order your copy here.
CHANEL CRUISE: THE GETAWAY
Photographer RUDI GEYSER
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Model MAYOR DUTIE at Elite Model Management
Hair HIROSHI MATSUSHITA
Make-up SUNAO TAKAHASHI at Saint Luke Artists using CHANEL Summer 2024 Makeup Collection and No.1 de CHANEL Skincare
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS and SONYA MAZURYK
Casting SIX WOLVES
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Location Scorpios, Bodrum, Türkiye
Ready-to-wear and accessories throughout by CHANEL CRUISE 2024-25 Collection
Special thanks to Scorpios, Bodrum, Türkiye and HANDE, VALENTINE, EDEN and PURPLE PR
