Virginie Viard Looked To Karl Lagerfeld For Chanel's First Virtual Couture Collection

Paris Couture Week is usually one of the fashion calenders most prestigious spectacles, but like many things this year - the Fédération de la Haute Couture announced that the Fall/Winter Couture Week would take place virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Chanel became the first major fashion house to show its cruise collection digitally and has now presented its Fall 2020/Winter 2021 couture collection the same way. 

Virgine Viard, the creative director who succeeded Karl Lagerfeld following his death in 2019, presented thirty exquisite designs with a rock-romantic aesthetic, with Chanel's signature tweeds reimagined in black and grey with splashes of pink. 

"I was thinking about a punk princess coming out of ‘Le Palace’ at dawn, with a taffeta dress, big hair, feathers and lots of jewellery," says Viard of the inspiration.

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In a video and images shot by Mikael Jansson, Australia's own Adut Akech was among those that modelled the edgy, elegant, and undeniably Chanel creations. 

"This collection is more inspired by Karl Lagerfeld than Gabrielle Chanel," Viard said in a press release. "Karl would go to ‘Le Palace’, he would accompany these very sophisticated and very dressed up women, who were very eccentric too."

"For me, Haute Couture is romantic by its very essence. There is so much love in each one of these silhouettes," she reflected.