Paris (AFP)

The designer of Chanel Virginie Viard draws the curtain on the excessiveness of the Lagerfeld years with a first collection since the coronavirus crisis presented with ease, Monday online.

Called "stroll in the Mediterranean", this cruise collection was initially to be presented on May 7 in Capri, Italy, but the parade had been canceled in the midst of an epidemic.

In the images posted on social networks by the famous French house, the first to suggest what the next Fashion Week could bring together online, we do not see a parade. But a succession of 51 looks filmed at the seaside with a zoom on a few novelties like chain micro-bags or maxi-sunglasses with visor.

"The reverse" due to the health crisis "did not so much influence the collection that I wanted anyway smaller, lighter at all levels," said the very discreet Virginie Viard, right arm for 30 years of Karl Lagerfeld to whom she succeeded after her death in February 2019, in her first interview published this weekend in Le Figaro.

"I have never been a big fan of the Pharaonic parades, even if it was fun with Karl," Virginie Viard told Le Figaro.

- "Another era" -

"Yes, I have a different vision from that of Karl. With me, you are not likely to walk around with eccentric things. Sometimes he wondered if he was not going too far but as he was going all out , his idea was getting brilliant. Only, it's not me, and above all it's not the same time anymore, "she continued.

Its cruise collection - the one that the big houses present in the spring, often abroad outside the four annual Fashion weeks - is designed "to travel light (...) with clothes easy to live with and of multiple use".

Long skirts can thus be worn as bustier dresses when you go up them, transparent dresses are combined with jackets that can be untied and put on shorts.

White, pink, blue, lots of thin belts on the naked waist, casual shoes like flat mules decorated with intertwined double C or hybrid sandals between flip flops and sneakers: the collection inspired by actresses of the 60s breathes freshness and relaxation.

The next week of men's ready-to-wear and that of high fashion from June-July being planned online, the designer "pray that in October we can parade with music, girls, even if there is few guests. "

Hundreds of actors in the fashion industry, upset by the coronavirus crisis, have called to rethink manufacturing and fashion shows while two tenors, Saint Laurent and Gucci have already renounced the "old-fashioned" ritual of Fashion weeks.

"There are certainly too many Fashion weeks all over the world. Perhaps just one could be enough," said French designer Marine Serre in May in Le Monde, spearheading with Belgian Dries Van Noten a manifest for more responsible fashion.

For the two stylists, who hope that the heavyweights will join their movement, the creative emotion is inseparable from the fashion shows, but these must be made "more ecological".

© 2020 AFP