Chanel’s latest show took place on the spectacular rooftop of La Cité Radieuse, the radical-for-its-time “city-in-the-sky” in Marseille designed by Le Corbusier in 1947.
It’s the latest stop in the deluxe fashion brand’s tour of cities with which its ultra chi-chi clients are probably unfamiliar. Almost 18 months ago: Dakar in Senegal; five months ago: Manchester.
Marseille, with its high crime rates, “is always being demonised by the French press,” says Bruno Pavlovsky, the president of Chanel Fashion. “But a lot of young artists have left Paris to live here. It’s a dynamic city with a lot of energy”. He paused to sip on a dainty cup of espresso. We were sitting on mid-century sofas in one of La Cité’s freshly-restored apartments with double-height windows overlooking the sea.
There is so much to unpick here. La Cité Radieuse, a concrete block with compelling 360-degree views of the Mediterranean and the mountains, was commissioned by the French government to provide affordable housing. It’s now a Unesco World Heritage Site and some of its apartments – which have been meticulously renovated, enlarged by combining two adjacent flats, and lovingly furnished with pieces by Eileen Grey, Charlotte Perriand and Le Corb himself – are now highly desirable (and listed on Airbnb).
The “street” of shops originally envisioned as a corridor of convenience stores for the inhabitants now has elegant boutiques selling art books and artisanal clothes.
It is still very much worth a visit, a compelling vision of how democratic and communal high-rise living can be. The links with a luxury fashion house may be tenuous – and who knows what Le Corbusier would have made of today’s Chanel clients with their pile-’em-all-on approach to status symbols. But he and Gabrielle Chanel were both towering figures of modern design.
No contemporary designer, in any discipline, could fail to be intrigued by La Cité. Chanel’s creative director Virginie Viard – whose tastes, as we are starting to see, veer towards the contemporary and recent past, while her famous predecessor Karl Lagerfeld found himself constantly drawn to the 18th century – is no exception.
Up on the vast concrete terrace, with its small communal pool and panoramic views, clients and fashion editors shivered beneath their plastic umbrellas. It always rains during the Resort collections, and the fashion houses always stage open-air shows.The clothes spoke to balmier weather. Several models braved the elements in one-piece swimsuits. Others were slightly luckier in that they got to wear oversized crochet cardigans in fizzy shades of ochre and yellow – just two elements of a large and disparate collection.
Other outfits included long, slouchy tweed jackets over Bermudas, cute white broderie anglaise midis worn with white flatform flip-flops, ruffled dresses in Provençal prints, short tweed sheath dresses with metallic patchwork pockets and neat denim trouser suits, comprising cropped jeans and jackets. The latter are so smart and chic, it will be interesting to see if anyone wearing one gets turned away at the door of the more hidebound institutions.
Despite the less-than-ideal weather, which had been forecast for days, Pavlovsky says there was no reluctance among clients to attend. “They’re curious to come to places they might not ordinarily go. They loved Manchester: the football, the fish and chips… they’re fascinated by Marseille”.
As Chanel seeks to position itself ever further upstream alongside Hermès (Chanel now charges 10,000 euros for its Mademoiselle bag), it needs to find other ways to reach younger, less ivory-towered consumers. Part of that is showing in a concrete tower.
It has also introduced simpler, less expensive bags such as the Chanel Cabas and is increasingly leaning into its cultural programme. There are Chanel podcasts, hosted by glamorous Chanel ambassadors such as Charlotte Casiraghi, Princess Caroline of Monaco’s daughter, that blur the lines between literature, the arts and commerce… a sign that for many of today’s luxury clients, these are all part of the same picture.
More from the show...
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