Marseille All Day
Today, Chanel’s creative director Virginie Viard staged the house’s Cruise 2024/2025 runway show in Marseille, France, on the rooftop of the Cite Radieuse, an iconic modern apartment complex built between 1947 and 1952 by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier. The futuristic concrete space is currently an arts center with ongoing exhibitions and programming, a gathering place for the diversified creative scene that resides in the southern seaside town. In tandem with the show, Chanel also set up its own radio station for a podcast featuring conversations between a rotating mix of artists and creatives, like actress Marion Cotillard, sound director Michel Gaubert, chef Valentin Raffali, and curator and art historian Emmanuelle Luciani.
Marseille is a far cry from the streets of Manchester, where Viard transported guests for her pre-fall 2024 collection, but not so distant from the inspiration behind Chanel’s spring 2024 offering, Deauville, the French seaside escape where Gabrielle Chanel first launched her business as a milliner.
What all three destinations have in common is Viard’s artistic ties to them. Each place signifies the designer’s personal connection to music, art, architecture, and, of course, the DNA of Chanel. Ever since stepping into the role of creative director in 2019, Viard has been focused on appealing to a Millennial and Gen Z customer with vintage-inspired, sometimes cheeky collections, but the last several shows have proven that she’s found a sweet spot between novelty and nostalgia.
As Viard wrote in her collection notes about today’s show locale, “The sun, architecture, music and dance: Marseille also has a very strong sense of freedom.” She added, “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.” Indeed, the collection was filled with beachy references, though nothing that hit you over the head. Instead, it felt relaxed and cool, with effortless tweeds, sexy-but-not-skimpy swimsuits, sharp denim, and details like broderie anglaise, diving hoods, and press studs. These were urban-dwelling gallery girls on vacation.
A crochet bermuda short and matching cardigan could have skewed granny but didn’t, thanks to the addition of a mixed material gold belt and charm-bedecked open chainmail halter top. A grey open-weave mini skirt and sweater were given a sporty bent with a hooded half-zip cutout with a quiet, interlocking “C” logo at the chest. The rainbow-striped fuzzy mini tube dress and matching cropped cardi were also cool, as were the finale looks all in white–a breezy parade of confident Chanel women exploring the port town in their terrycloth platform flip-flops or no-frills black patent leather flats.
“Marseille is a city that puts me in touch with my emotions,” Viard wrote in her collection notes. “I tried to capture its power of attraction, its breath of fresh air, and to convey the energy that reigns there.” Energy is something that Viard has been able to conjure in her last three collections (inclusive of this one). It’s a youthful, chilled-out vibe that resonates with Coco Chanel’s legacy of making clothes for women who need to move freely—but always stylishly—in the world, whether by land or sea.
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