Chanel is in full bloom in its home city. Closing out the Paris Fashion Week schedule on October 3, Chanel creative director Virginie Viard presented her spring summer 2024 collection for the French luxury house. It was a show buoyed by the lightness and frivolity of spring.

 

Tell me about the collection?

The idea for this collection was spurred on by the gardens at villa Noailles, an architectural wonder set in the hills of Hyère, designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1923 and lived in by couple Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles.

To drive home this feeling of lightness, Viard presented a series of unlined organza baby doll dresses, airy blouses and loosely cut gowns. Even the pink and black tweed suits, of which there were many, were sent out without lining or epaulettes. It was a collection devoid of structure and rigidity, instead Viard nodded towards a sense of formality with Bermuda shorts, knee-length stockings, puffed-up evening gloves and easy breezy blazers.

This easy rhythm ticked over into the footwear, with not a heel in sight as models sauntered throughout the Grand Palais Éphémère show space in flip flops and mesh mary janes.

"Sophistication and informality, the tweed throughout the collection, sportswear and lace: I tried to bring one thing and its opposite together in the coolest way possible," says Viard of the Chanel Spring Summer 2024 collection. "And the gardens and swimming pool of the villa Noailles, that exceptional setting, lend themselves to that rather well.”

 

What models walked?

Chanel stalwarts like Rianne Van Rompaey, Liu Wen, Vivienne Rohner, Mariam de Vinzelle, Jill Kortleve, and Vittoria Ceretti were cast in the show. As was Nora Attal, Amelia Gray, Mica Arganaraz, Rebecca Longendyke, Quannah Chasinghorse, Gigi Hadid, Anok Yai, and Australian faces such as Adut Akech, Angelina Kendall, Lily Vander Meeden, and Ella McCutcheon.

 

See our favourite looks below