The seaside commune of Deauville, perched on the Côte Fleurie of France’s Normandy region, is where everything started for Gabrielle Chanel and the House of CHANEL: the founding of her coastal hat shop, and the first garments made under her visionary eye. "This story is very close to my heart," says CHANEL creative director Virginie Viard in her FW 24/25 show notes, centring the collection on the House's fabled 1913 origin story.
Drawing from Gabrielle Chanel's personal style – subtly masculine and irreverently elegant – the CHANEL Fall-Winter 2024/25 Ready-to-Wear collection encompassed chunky sailor sweaters knitted with Deauville landscapes, and silk blouses and flouncing tiered dresses intended to evoke a sense of breeze and breaking waves. The familiar tweed suiting so latent in the DNA of CHANEL was omnipresent; tweed fuschia skirt suits and belted oversized suiting paired largely with oversized sun hats, each embellished with brooches and available in a smattering of soft pinks and lilacs. The 1920s silhouettes didn't just stop there though, also making their presence known through tweed flat caps and elbow-grazing gloves, broad-shouldered peacoats, culottes and box-pleated skirts worn under dressing-gown-style belted coats.
The iconic quilted CHANEL bags were aplenty, with more than 70 iterations in the show, while the collection's palette was redolent of a seaside sunset – shades of pink, mauve, pale blue and orange earmarked by hints of brown and gold lamé. Cinema ticket-printed tops and 35mm film-printed dresses were also interspersed throughout the collection, referential of Deauville's connection to the cinema – and as the backdrop to French filmmaker Claude Lelouch's seminal 1966 film A Man and a Woman (the director himself in attendance).
Viard paid tribute to the film through the show opening, where House ambassador Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt starred in an Inez & Vinoodh-directed short film remake – Cruz sitting front row for the occasion in a leather skirt suit. Fellow front-rowers at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris included JENNIE, Angèle, Riley Keough, Margaret Qualley, Olivia Dean, Zoey Deutch and Zazie Beetz.
"For this collection, we recreated the Deauville boardwalk," Viard says of the runway's set, where models strolled adjacent to a large LED screen, on which long, romantic silhouettes stroll in the light from dawn to dusk. "The silhouette of David Bowie, the magnetism of film stars walking on the sand, like Anouk Aimée, a great friend of Gabrielle Chanel… this collection pays homage to these familiar figures."
See some of our favourite looks from the CHANEL FW24 show below.
