Chanel’s sparkling, bloom-inspired fall collection at Paris Fashion Week

Chanel’s sparkling, bloom-inspired fall display featured a 5m tall camellia altarpiece.

A thousand designs were launched by the flower. According to legend, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel first became obsessed with the camellia in 1913, when she pinned one to her belt – seduced by its simplicity, shape, purity, and vitality. The winter flower continues to captivate us more than a century later.

Virginie Viard, the creative director of the show, declared that Camellia is more than just a theme – to her it is an age-old signal. She values the subtleness and the power of this flower. As always, her designs were carefully crafted with largely whites, blacks, and hints of pinks. The camellia was used to decorate pockets, buttons, jackets, prints and shoes – although embellished with some sequins here and there – its shapes featured in slits worn on gowns, asymmetrical coats and diagonal-stitched skirts which gave the collection a sense of movement.

The designer also experimented with menswear jackets and dandy-like British dressing gowns.

“The faded colours, the dusky pink, the crafted pieces, a certain English vibe, the comfortable enveloping coats, the authentic materials, make the collections more real,” Viard said.