Virginie Viard - Designer, Creative Director of Chanel

[blueorchid]

On a side note i don't understand so much the hate for the few women in top CS positions doing real clothes and sell well there is a big discrepancy with consumers of fashion as a sport or fan and actual buyers.

There are so many bad bad male designers out there they don't get as much universal hate as the few that are not gay fantasy friendly female designers like Phoebe.
PPP is as boring as MGC yes only because he ad some dramatic gay flair on the same ideas its ok ?

I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but... there could never be an interesting or thoughtful discussion about this on tFS. Not when certain members accused MGC of getting her position at Dior only because she has ovaries. If I have to guess, Virginie was successful at fulfilling her brief at Chanel. Keeping it going between the interim period between Karl and the real Chanel successor. Good for her for leaving. Imagine putting up with Karl for 30 years and this is the bullsh*t you leave over?

ok John Galliano just cleared his ins, I mean I can't think of anyone more qualified than him for this role, except the scandal, but come on! It was just a mistake many years ago and it's not like that Karl was so innocent, he had many careless speeches himself as well. Let the ultimate dream come true!!!

Galliano at Chanel sounds like a f*cking nightmare, jesus. Totally the antithesis of Chanel herself, sorry... well... in terms of fashion, at least.

 

[brandon J pierre]

ok John Galliano just cleared his ins, I mean I can't think of anyone more qualified than him for this role, except the scandal, but come on! It was just a mistake many years ago and it's not like that Karl was so innocent, he had many careless speeches himself as well. Let the ultimate dream come true!!!
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Well if you know the history of Chanel the scandal might get him the promotion 😭 😂

 

[chanelh]

Well if you know the history of Chanel the scandal might get him the promotion 😭 😂

Lol don't be so harsh haha, again no one is really innocent, just how you present yourself

 

[Lola701]

I honestly would like that full 90s ... I am not against joyful fashion.

But a different kind of fun, no?
I want fun, I want something infused with joy and movement but something that feels like today.
I don’t want fun to always relate to nostalgia. We are not in 1995, I’m not going to be dressed like Claudia Schiffer in that show…
Maybe that’s why I would rather have Vauthier than Slimane.

Well if you know the history of Chanel the scandal might get him the promotion 😭 😂

Probably not because The Weirthemers, who she tried to screw over, are still owners. That’s the complexity of the brand. A rich Jew family owns the brand of a collabo.

 

[Nimsay]

Yea Vauthier can certainly do a credible Chanel. It wouldnt be super fun though. Just non stop perfect black tie which is Chanels HC bread and butter.

The Ws said they picked Karl bc he never copied chanel.

 

[MulletProof]

On a side note i don't understand so much the hate for the few women in top CS positions doing real clothes and sell well there is a big discrepancy with consumers of fashion as a sport or fan and actual buyers.
[...]

There are so many bad bad male designers out there they don't get as much universal hate as the few that are not gay fantasy friendly female designers like Phoebe.
PPP is as boring as MGC yes only because he ad some dramatic gay flair on the same ideas its ok ?

Unlike menswear, womenswear has a TON of male observants with a wide range of reasons on why they're observing.. some more complex than others, from pretending to see fashion but only watching cause you're watching women (remember Trump in every front row back in the day? lol), to policing in some cultures (or socioeconomic sectors), to seeing it for its artistic value, as a case study, as a shelter from macho cultures, because it's fun and high speed, to more complex reasons like wishing you could wear all of it and wearing it, or abstaining and sometimes developing some some type of resentment on the people who have no choice but to wear womenswear because.. similar societies.

I do think this merits some academic research on fashion (some Vestoj contributor should dive into it).. because, I for one, as a female consumer, never been and never seen any woman obsessed with menswear, not online or in real life, down to the point of being combative or furious at, say, the new menswear designer at Dior, or affirming very confidently what men should be wearing and what the direction on menswear should be. I seriously could not care less, you might as well ask me about the new NASA uniforms lol, I don't care. So to me it is an interesting phenomenon (relatively new, late 20th century I'd say..?!).. it's not always been bad but I do notice it's gotten a bit odd in the past 10 years, as fashion became exclusively corporate.

 

[Lola701]

Yea Vauthier can certainly do a credible Chanel. It wouldnt be super fun though. Just non stop perfect black tie which is Chanels HC bread and butter.

The Ws said they picked Karl bc he never copied chanel.

I would have never considered him if it wasn’t for that collection he did with classic Couture shapes. I think it was the prom dresses collection.
It looked fun and chic with the allure of Couture and his clothes looks somehow comfortable.

10 years ago, I would have never include him in my list.

But I think that Virginie made taking Chanel more relatable than taking it after Karl. There’s no real urge for explosive creativity, just elevation.

Galliano would have never been in my list though.

 

[IndigoHomme]

Maybe Hedi Will be a great idea for Chanel, if all of you can remember all the celebs wearing Chanel Womenswear, specially korean and chinese popstars, the Brand can find the perfect formula for the success: Young rich people buying expensive ítems. To be honest, Chanel needs to catch a Young consumer, their loyal buyers are dying... (literally)

 

[disco54]

I agree that Jeremy Scott would be the best choice,, mainly because of his capacity to reinvent himself and experiment with brand iconography.

I wouldn't be mad at Hedi being appointed, but it's just too narrow and rigid of an aesthetic for a brand like Chanel. I can't imagine 5 to 10 years of swinging Kleig lights all over the Grand Palais. rock music on loop, waifs with unwashed hair, everything shot in B&W. The brand fatigue would comes very quickly.

Not a particular fan of him but he is very talented designer, he forms more of a cline with Karl's design aesthetic with some flourishes of Lacroix. Frankly Hedi's gaunt rocker girl aesthetic would look cringy and terrible at Chanel, in the same way Gabriel Hurst was a bad fit at Chloe. Scott's designs have a whimsical quality which resonates with Chanel . Though personally I feel Marc Jacobs would do the TRUE justice to Chanel, but I am not really feeling Slimane at Chanel doing the same sh!t 3x and his moody nature of always wanting to be in LA.

 

[Lola701]

Maybe Hedi Will be a great idea for Chanel, if all of you can remember all the celebs wearing Chanel Womenswear, specially korean and chinese popstars, the Brand can find the perfect formula for the success: Young rich people buying expensive ítems. To be honest, Chanel needs to catch a Young consumer, their loyal buyers are dying... (literally)

But where this assumption that Chanel is having a hard time catching young customers comes from?
I see Millenials and Gen-Z buying the sneakers and still buying things on resell and things like that. I’m going to be 40 and for the longest i can remember, Chanel has always attracted and I started being a customer from the moment I was able to save to own something. I think I was 19 when I bought my first Chanel item.

Even though I wasn’t buying Virginie’s when I went to Chanel stores either in Korea, in Europe or the US, I see younger people and quite a large demographic. It was the same under Karl too.

What impressed me though during Virginie’s era was that the price increases didn’t stopped younger customers to want Chanel.

Chanel is quite aspirational to many generations. Hedi might maybe add something in terms of image but IRL, the prices are so detached from Celine or YSL than I don’t expect the Hedi customer to come and jump right away for 2K jeans, 6K knitwear and 8K jackets.

Maybe the perception of Hedi style will convince people that Chanel is bought by young people but it has never not been the case.

 

[IndigoHomme]

Waiting for Haider Ackermann's name to appear in the thread

 

[gallianostan]

this obsession with haider ackermann is so 2011, wtf is going on here lmao

 

[IndigoHomme]

Wait, are you really waiting for someone who introduced Walmart Halloween costumes as a collection to take over Chanel?

 

[GivenchyAddict]

^ the moment he signed his contract with Canada Goose I have stopped mentioning him left and right. 😤

 

[Nimsay]

Thats just anna making sure haider can keep caviar on the table

 

[Caffeine]

2K jeans, 6K knitwear and 8K jackets

you will need to increase these by 50% now

 

[tourbillions]

the prices are so detached from Celine or YSL than I don’t expect the Hedi customer to come and jump right away for 2K jeans, 6K knitwear and 8K jackets.

i was just thinking about this. The chanel woman can afford celine however the current celine woman might not be able to afford Chanel. So im not sure how he can bring his stans to Chanel and make sales out of it when even at Celine the sales were starting to flatten. And how would he be able to cater to the elitist Chanel woman who are looking for bat sh*t crazy fashion that no one else can afford?

 

[Caffeine]

In the olden days, when McQueen made some crazy dresses with 5 or 10 figure px attached, they always found buyers. Same with KL - boutiques still carry some KL work with original prices attached (maybe a steal now lol) without any discount offered whatsoever. People will pay for gorgeous designs.

The Chanel issue is not only price point, but what you buy for the price you pay. Perhaps I belong to the "women who used to shop at Chanel" category now (career women in our 30s, 40s and 50s), but I do believe that if you show a shapeless Lesage tweed jacket and sell for $15,000, I'm not your kind of customer. My guess is that the customer base for this type of product is smaller, but if it is their exclusive strategy, so be it. I feel like the "new" direction of late has been articulated through their merchandising strategy and I told my SA as such.

 

[tricotineacetat]

Whether Hedi finally gets the job, I’m very surprised by how people seems to be excited to see the same act for the 3rd time at another house.
Apparently, I’m one of the few that is already bored by the B&W campaigns with captions in capital letters with Hedi Slimane credited in everything.
I’m already bored by the endless combinations of very expensive basics presented in luscious ways.

Giving the prices of Chanel currently, I’m also surprised that men would be excited to spend 8K for a tweed jacket by Hedi Slimane.

If I didn’t buy one piece of item by Virginie, the perspective of having Hedi as a CD wouldn’t make me change my tune…Even if I bought a menswear look from his Celine.

And it’s facts like that that makes me wonder the necessity of having Slimane coming to such a well oiled machine.
There are rumors that the CEO wants to eliminate the separation between all the operations but even for a control freak like Hedi, it doesn’t seems like an ideal position.

I feel like Chanel is the dream job for a lot of designers but when it comes to Hedi in that equation, it seems more about branding than design.

I still don’t get the fuzz about him for Chanel, really.

But that's the thing - Virginie Viard's takeover after Karl was very much in the name of 'keeping that well-oiled machine running', obviously with her departure and the announcement of a new 'creative organization', it clearly reads that Chanel is looking for a complete overhaul - And I agree, it would be nice to see a new vision for the house reflected in all aspects of the brand, something a bit sleeker and more modern. The foundation Hedi Slimane laid out at Dior Homme and Saint Laurent outlived his tenures by the double, all throughout Kris Van Assche's time as creative director as well as during Anthony Vaccarello's time at Saint Laurent.

One of the things that need to be taken into account is Chanel's steep raise of prices and push for exclusivity on their classic leather goods, with the aim to position itself clearly at the very top of all luxury goods maison's prices. To support that, I think it makes sense that the ready-to-wear highlights a sense of timelessness and continuity, rather than eccentric fashion statements whose reception cannot be foreseen - In that regard, I think Chanel's tailleur-making seen through the exacting eye of a menswear tailor like Hedi could provide just enough of an update to keep existing customers happy while at the same time opening it to new customers. If the end result would look anything like what Karl Lagerfeld designed in the years following his extreme weight loss (and maybe seen through the lense of what Daphne Guinness picked during those days), it could look fabulous.

One thing I may add - When we look at all the borrowed-from-the-boys leisure outfits Coco Chanel used to wear, there's a lot of that not only in Hedi Slimane's Celine, but also in some of his past work at Dior Homme.

 

[IndigoHomme]

Ok, ok... let me fuel the fire a little with a card under my sleeve: Clare Waight Keller