‘We need to take risks’: Chanel gets gritty with Marseille show

Grey hoodies layered under the pastel tweed suits, a catwalk on top of an apartment building with concrete benches instead of gilt chairs, looking out over the rooftops of Marseille, France’s less manicured second city. Chanel has – in fashion speak – a New Look. In the parlance of 2024, it is in its gritty era.

“If Marseille is unexpected, that’s good. We don’t want to be stuck. We need to take risks if we want to show that Chanel is for everyone,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, before the brand’s first ever show in the city. “If we were just for the happy few in the Rue Cambon [in Paris], then that would be the beginning of the end.”

To be relevant and modern now means engaging with diversity and real life – even for a billion-dollar luxury brand. Coming on the heels of shows in Manchester last year and in Dakar, Senegal, in 2022, the choice of Marseille to showcase this summer’s cruise collection reflects a new strategy at Chanel. “We don’t always want to talk about the history of Chanel – we want to be about the future. Fashion is an outlook, and it is for everyone,” Pavlovsky said.

This being Chanel, it was not any old concrete rooftop, but a performance space atop Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s 337-apartment “vertical village”. The block, with its distinctive facade of colourful circuit-board graphics, was built in response to the postwar shortage of social housing in the city and is an icon of visual storytelling that has become a city landmark. Virginie Viard, the Chanel designer, chose it to represent the “very strong sense of freedom … and of everyday life” in Marseille.

The event was made a little grittier than Chanel had planned as heavy rain and blustery winds forced guests to huddle under umbrellas. (It was, many guests agreed, colder and rainier than Manchester in December.) The collection, timed to coincide with holiday-wardrobe shopping, was clearly intended for a sunnier forecast. Immaculately blow-dried hair was instantly dishevelled by the wind, and models in crochet shorts, broderie anglaise camisoles and silk dresses looked thankful for the down-to-earth touches of flat shoes and hoodies as they walked stoically through the drizzle.

The mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, welcomed the Chanel show, staged on the same date as the Olympique de Marseille football team’s Europa League semi-final, as a great day for the city, drawing a comparison between Le Corbusier, whose radical architecture expresses the energetic spirit of the city, and Coco Chanel. “Gabrielle Chanel revolutionised the way women dressed, and Le Corbusier the way people live. So it fits completely,” he said.

The more inclusive messaging of the show locations is in sharp contrast to Chanel’s pricing. In 2010, a classic 2.55 Chanel flap handbag cost about £3,000; the equivalent model now sells for £11,000. Chanel is closing the gap on Hermès, whose handbags have traditionally been the most expensive – and the most hallowed – in France. Pavlovsky defended the pricing, saying: “It is a very complex bag to manufacture, with 278 steps in production, and there are fewer and fewer people with the skills to make it. There is a lot of noise about the price of that bag, but it costs about the same as a jacket, and no one complains about the price of our jackets.”

Marseille is multicultural to its core, in contrast to the capital, where the multiculturalism of the city at large is barely glimpsed in the centre. “Marseille is a tough city, but no city is perfect,” said Pavlovsky. “You read a lot in the French press about problems here. But New York, Los Angeles – they are not perfect either. Marseille has drawn many communities from around the Mediterranean, living together for centuries. There is great beauty here, and style.” He added that the Manchester show had been very successful. “We had great feedback from clients who came to Manchester. Some of them might not have thought to go there, but if Chanel is going, then they are going, and they loved it. This is the same approach.”