Chanel’s fall 2024 haute couture show today at the grand 19th-century Parisian opera house Palais Garnier felt like stepping into In the Loge, impressionist artist Mary Cassatt’s famous 1874 painting of a bourgeois woman at the opera looking through her opera glasses, while a man in the background looks at her. Guests were seated in the balustraded corridors surrounding the auditorium, in red velvet opera boxes designed especially for the occasion by French director Christophe Honoré. The spectators gazed at the models rustling past in velvet, taffeta, and duchesse satin—and at each other. The staging ingeniously highlighted that a fashion show is never just about the action on the runway.
This was the first Chanel collection presented since former artistic director Virginie Viard’s sudden departure just weeks ago. Hosting couture inside a theater where the national opera and ballet companies perform was a fitting venue to celebrate the maison’s long connection to French arts and culture. It also sent a message of aesthetic continuity. Chanel is a patron of both the Opéra national de Paris and the Ballet de l’Opéra, and Viard’s pink-and-white aquarelle dreamscape of a final haute couture collection for spring 2024 was inspired by costumes that founder Gabrielle Chanel herself designed for the 1924 Bronislava Nijinska ballet Le Train Bleu.
The color palette was darker this season, with lots of black, gold, silver, and rich jewel tones. There were classic Chanel bouclé suits in spades, most cut just above the knee, with or without box pleats. Many featured tassels, cabochons, braids, and other glamorous embellishments. Little black dresses—or, more accurately—long black dresses also featured prominently. A number of looks were topped with long coats and opera capes which wouldn’t have looked out of place at Palais Garnier when it opened nearly 150 years ago. But there was still skin on display: the opening look featured a billowing, floor-length cape over a bodysuit, a look that felt very Gen Z and reminiscent of the sportswear costumes Chanel designed for the Nijinska ballet.
Nods to the wardrobe of opera divas and prima ballerinas were threaded throughout the collection. Some of the stage references were quite literal, as in a pair of tulle tutus cut to classical (short) and romantic (full) lengths, and black swan feathers that danced across the shoulders of fitted jackets. Others were a bit more oblique, like a white blouse with ruffles at the collar and cuffs, and a white peplum top with buttons down the front worn with cuffed pantaloons that called to mind the pantomime character Pierrot. The bride, Chanel’s annual closer for its couture shows, wore a dreamy ballgown with puffed sleeves, a long train, and a bodice embroidered with the house’s signature camellias, fit for Madama Butterfly or Lucia di Lammermoor.
