The Met Gala, in full garish crowd-pleasing costumes, returned this week, flooding the fashion news cycle. Ditto the hordes of fans crowding outside the fashion shows, and the audience clambering inside.
So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that destination shows, the traveling extravaganzas featuring the in-between collections most commonly known as “cruise” or “resort” or sometimes just “winter” — are held in front of an audience of VICs (very important customers) and “invited” press who have generally flown in for the event (not DailyExpertNews, which doesn’t accept free travel) — have returned as well: and not just in the random, occasional form they took in the past two years, but in critical mass.
All that industry searching that went on at the start of the pandemic as to whether this was an opportunity to call the system back, use the right herbs, slow down the hamster wheel of shows and stuff and try to do a reset feed? Apparently faded into the mists of the Covid past. The temptation of pretty baubles and the promise of escapism are apparently too great to resist. Not to mention the eyeballs and Instagram posts that come with importing a glamorous guest list to a shiny, inaccessible location.
First past the post this time around was Chanel, who unveiled its 2022-23 cruise collection on Thursday at the white sands of Hotel Monte-Carlo Beach in Monaco, with guests sheltering in the shade of striped cabana beds. It will be followed by Louis Vuitton in San Diego in the coming weeks; Gucci in Puglia, Italy; Balenciaga in New York; and Dior in Seville, Spain, each with their own special reason for being (though probably not with an explanation for how all those trips are in line with its net-zero emissions commitments).
As for why Monaco, Chanel’s creative director Virginie Viard, said in her show notes it was “a matter of feeling” and memory: From the beach, guests could see La Vigie, the elaborate Belle Epoque villa rented by the former Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, where he would often entertain Chanel favorites Princesses Caroline and Stephanie of Monaco, as well as Caroline’s daughter, Charlotte Casiraghi, currently a face of Chanel.
Indeed, the collection, which was teased by a short film by Sofia and Roman Coppola featuring Formula 1 race cars, casinos, models on motorboats and a series of archival footage by Grace Kelly and co, all to the beat of Go-Go’s song ‘This Town’ may have had the subtitle ‘The Monaco princesses: the 1980s years’. That’s the era of Chanel’s heritage where Ms. Viard seems to feel most at home.
And it was pretty easy to picture the Grimaldis in their full-length Paris Match magazine featuring catnip-glory nightclubs in the sequined tweed jumpsuits, the bouclé joggers, the cropped suits and leather motorcycle jackets parading by. The same goes for chiffon tea dresses printed with black and white checkered start flags and seaside stripe tuxedo shirt dresses. Not to mention the new handbags, in the form of racing helmet heads and tennis rackets. Fun with clichés and aristos.
But whether anyone else who experienced that period would want to visit it again remains a question.
Caroline and Stephanie have left their party princess past behind. As for the generation that didn’t experience it the first time, they generally like to spare their ironic rediscovery.
Or at least look like they had. Enter Hedi Slimane and Celine, the rare exception to the destiny show revival. After all, Mr. Slimane doesn’t like to play by anyone’s rules other than his own. So instead of traveling for his winter show in 2022, he dropped a surprise runway short film titled ‘Dans Paris’.
Set in the recently renovated 18th century gilded Hotel de la Marine in the Place de la Concorde, as well as the courtyard of the Invalides – the building where Napoleon is buried and where Mr Slimane built a modernist black box for his shows – the mini film featured its usual cast of stubby, skinny youngsters (including Lisa from Black Pink) marching through the empty rooms in a wardrobe of loose items that, as has become his signature, resembled nothing more than a deep dive into a closet of bourgeois Parisian platitudes mixed to cool.
See jeans with fuzzy metal jackets; black turtlenecks worn with a thick gold chain around the neck and under trench coats; sequin skirts under slouchy sweatshirts; and bottom-grazing leather mini dresses with studded motorcycle boots. There were even Fair Isle sweaters paired with leopard print skirts (not your mom’s grunge).
Everything had a bag, a boot and dark sunglasses. The point is impossible to miss – or resist, for that matter: have celebrity specs, will travel.
That’s some shade.
