Haute Couture 2023: Chanel & Its Tribute To The Bestiary Collection By Gabrielle Chanel
Virginie Viard presented her spring/summer 2023 haute couture collection at Paris Haute Couture Week on January 24.

CHANEL’s Spring/Summer Haute Couture show was a collaboration between the house’s creative director Virginie Viard and artist Xavier Veilhan, with whom she previously collaborated on the Fall/Winter 2022/2023 and Spring/Summer 2022 Haute Couture collections.
Held at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris, creative designer Virginie Viard opted for handmade animals. Thus, she chose Xavier Veilhan to help bring her vision to life. “For Veilhan’s third participation, I asked him to reinterpret the apartment’s bestiary and incorporate his own,” she says. “The entire universe of embroidery in the collection is turned toward the animal world.” Xavier Veilhan’s puzzle-like artworks, reflecting dreamy animal sculptures, presented a “stylized bestiary.” Originating in ancient history and popularized in the Middle Ages, bestiaries were compendiums of beasts both real and imaginary, illustrating each creature as a living allegory of morality.
Viard revisited Gabrielle Chanel’s famous apartment at 31 rue Cambon to take a closer look at her collection of objects and drawings, featuring animals, such as birds, lions, camels, dogs and deer, or sculptures.

The show itself came to life with a festive parade that went into action, as it resembled a kind of street parade. Likewise, Veilhan set the stage to look like a village preparing for a festive parade, with giant animals made of wood, paper and cardboard. “I like it when the marvelous bursts in and interrupts the course of events,” says the creative director.
“The CHANEL costume borrows its codes from the women’s uniforms of parades and shows. Top hat, bow tie, white gloves, lace-up boots, satin cape, pleated skirt, double-breasted or tailcoat jackets, tuxedo shirt, sequins, very short shorts, petticoats. Dresses and jumpsuits all in lightness and refinement, overlays, transparencies, ruffles, pleats, thin straps and repainted lace, are made in silk tulle, taffeta, organza, crepe georgette and chantilly. And like any beautiful story, the Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection, with its fairy parade, closes with the bride in a dress embroidered with swallows. – by Chanel.


The collection featured embroidered motifs on short tweed suits and wrap dresses that included kittens, corgis, rabbits and swallows that shared the spotlight with the Maison’s iconic doves, deer and camellias.
Chanel attire borrowed its codes from the women’s uniforms of fashion shows and runway shows. “Top hat, bow tie, white gloves, lace-up boots, satin cape, pleated skirt, double-breasted jacket or tailcoat, tuxedo shirt, sequins, shorts, petticoat: it is in the poetry of the majorettes that Virginie Viard draws the imaginary of her Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection.” – CHANEL.
After this couture collection identifiable from a youthful point of view, abbreviated and golden Chanel tweed varieties followed: a short trapeze coat, pleated skirts cut like minis, and then a tiny sugar-pink coat-dress with a raised collar. The outerwear, either a tweed coat or a satin cape, came in exaggerated shapes that cinched around the body, and tweed shorts that billowed from the hip.

The art of the wooden puzzle, the craftsmanship of Chanel, the embroidery of Lesage: this is a new Chanel story for this summer.
“The final passage of the Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection imagined by Virginie Viard strolls in a flurry of animal-inspired embroidery at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris, within a minimalist decor populated by a bestiary of larger-than-life sculptures by artist Xavier Veilhan.”
And like any beautiful runway show, the Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection, with its fairy parade, closes with the bride in a dress embroidered with swallows.Let’s have a look at some of the boldest looks from the Chanel’s Spring 2023 haute couture collection.


