Fashion is a fantasy and a dream. This is definitively a truism about the most glamorous industry of our times, but so is the statement that says that fashion has strong ties with politics. After all, an election is a bit like a runway show with candidates being valued for their style choices before they even open their mouths to speak. The political dimension of Chanel's Resort 2018 collection seemed confused or, maybe, rather dubious.
Showcased on Wednesday, Chanel's runway officially opened the cruise season that continues on Sunday with Prada in Milan, Dior in Los Angeles, Louis Vuitton in Kyoto and Gucci in Florence at the end of the month.
Chanel's runway took place among fake Greek ruins that reproduced an idealised version of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis and the Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion in the Galerie Courbe at the Grand Palais.
According to rumours, Karl Lagerfeld would have liked to show the collection in a proper historical location in Greece, but the local authorities refused it (in much the same way the Central Archaeological Council in Athens refused Gucci's alleged request to show its cruise collection on the Acropolis).
The set with its crumbling Ionic columns and solitary olive tree sprouting among the rocks, may have been representing an archaeological excavation, as proved by the freshly discovered Venus emerging from a burlap sack (ready to be shipped to a museum or to be sold to a collector?), a copy of Coco's Venus still preserved in her apartment on Rue Cambon (also featured on the invitation to the show).
The designs on the dusty runway were Chanel-ised renditions of classic Greek garments: simple tunics in muted dusty beige, camel and grey tweeds with frayed edges opened the show.
They were followed by designs that evoked in their silhouettes or in the colour combination ancient vases: the striped black and terracotta numbers and the pottery relief knits seemed linked with Athenian vases and their black and red figures.
Long pleated designs evoked chitons, while bringing to mind the lightness of Isadora Duncan; modern-day goddesses were conjured up by the swimsuits matched with long see-through kimono-shaped dressing gowns covered in beads.
The architecture of the Ionic, Doric and Corinthian columns inspired some of the decorations and the silhouettes on a series of white dresses and separates, but the progression from one style to the next was also replicated in the gradually narrower pleats of a trio of burlap skirts, while mythology and goddesses came back in the final fluid numbers in a series of soft shades or in virginal white.
The burlap pleated skirts matched with overdecorated bustiers were also references to Athena, goddess of wisdom, craft, and war, strategically evoked also in the decorative owls (Athena's symbols) on the bags.
Accessories also borrowed from Greece and went from strappy sandals with column-shaped heels in bright and bold shades that included fluorescent tones, to golden armbands, golden laurel leaves and coin details for that Midas-meets-Hip Hop touch.
An inexperienced reviewer may have just identified on this runway a battle between the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits, with no final winner, just a combination of the two elements.
Lagerfeld explained in the press release that "The criteria of beauty in Ancient then Classical Greece still holds true". In a nutshell this collection proved for him "La Modernité de l'Antiquité" (The Modernity of Antiquity), a principle already explored by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli in Valentino's A/W 2015 Haute Couture collection (inspired in that case by the wonders of classical Rome).
There were no apparent real references to modern times and to a France divided between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen.
Some reviewers actually tried to spot the connection between this collection and the democratic Greek civilisation, but more political messages may have been found in one inspiration for this collection, Chanel's designs for Jean Cocteau's 1922 Antigone (a link highlighted in the show notes).
In that occasion Chanel preferred to put actors in costumes - defined by the critics of the time primitive yet elegant - that clearly resembled her Autumn/Winter 1922 collection. The latter featured heavy woolen coats with jacquard woven patterns, tunics matched with rope belts and large costume jewellery pieces.
There were indeed strong echoes in Chanel's Resort 2018 of the hand-knitted wrap cloak that Mademoiselle designed for Antigone and that featured undyed raw wool in which Greek vase motifs in maroon and brown had been intricately woven; in the same way as the neutral-coloured outfits in this collection called to mind the costumes Chanel designed for Creon and Haemon that were accessorised with hammered metal headbands.
Sadly, Cocteau's Antigone anticipated the passion of the right wing for this character: Antigone was soon afterwards recast as an allegorical figure of a purified France, with many Nazi and Fascist supporters often returning to Sophocles' work for nationalist inspirations and to highlight how the Aryan man found his roots in Greek civilisation. It was only in 1944 that Antigone became a symbol of underground freedom fighters with Jean Anouilh's version of the tragedy.
You got therefore the impression that the final message of this "Mascarade à la Grecque" collection was a dichotomic one: most reviewers thought that Lagerfeld (who strategically opted not to give interviews maybe to avoid getting questions about his political views and remain neutral to be sure his name/brand can sell to wealthy people with all sorts of political views...) was channelling Greek democracy; the Nazi interpretation of Antigone pointed instead to a narrow-minded nationalism (and Chanel's Resort collection also returned to Paris after being on a tour that touched Dubai, Seoul and Havana in the last few years; this was an attempt at boosting the French capital after the terrorist attacks, but it can also be read as a symbolic return to patriotism).
Yet, in many ways, like the Greek heroes of mythology, Lagerfeld sinned of hybris: his Greece remained a cold and idealized fantasy, a place of pastoral beauty that only exists for the very few ones who can afford it and certainly not for those ones written out of history who suffer the consequences of the debt crisis in Greece or who land as migrants on its islands.
There was a final message in the show notes that, read in the wrong context, may assume a dubious meaning: "I'm suggesting going back to move forward," the designer said. "To create the future you have to pay attention to the past."
The artisanal tweeds, the draped and pleated dresses and classical details tried to suggest us that Chanel is a legend as worthy as the timeless Greek myths and, to push such a historical house into the future, you must also look at its history.
Shame that Coco Chanel became a symbol of the far right, and, remembering this, you felt a bit cold in front of this fake Greece that evoked not the ghosts of demoracy, but the spectre of Chanel's popularity among the French nationalist movement. Think that fashion is not political? Well, you'd better think twice.
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