The French luxury house broadcast color and material on Tuesday like a wave in the darkness of the huge hall of lost steps of the former courthouse in Dakar.
This is the first time that Chanel has traveled to Africa to celebrate the fashion craftsmen who work for it.
In these dark times, the artistic director Virginie Viard breathed the energy of the 1970s through the modernist peristyle on an orthonormal plan, combining colors, patterns and seventies cuts with the essential camellias, in long and narrow coats, on tight pants and flares and platform shoes.
Africa is there, at the very end of the Cape Verde peninsula facing the ocean.
Mama Sané, Ada in the film "Atlantic", opens the parade which undulates between the slender columns on the musical scansions of the Senegalese Obree Daman and the South African DJ DBN Gogo.
Celebrities like Senegalese rapper Nix and Burundian singer Khadja Nin rub shoulders with American rapper Pharrell Williams and British supermodel Naomi Campbell in the audience.
A Chanel show in Dakar, December 6, 2022 © JOHN WESSELS / AFP
The stars are the small hands of Chanel and, despite perhaps discreet references to the place, the collection itself is a Chanel collection, the house suggests.
But with the Covid-19 pandemic, Chanel has had three years to expand its Dakar project and weave, she says, a "creative dialogue" destined to last with the Senegalese cultural scene.
Chanel has presented a Métiers d'art collection since 2002 outside the official fashion show calendar;
it puts to work the virtuosity of the embroiderers, feather-makers, glove-makers and goldsmiths whose unique and fragile know-how Chanel has been employing for decades.
The event has traveled to New York, Salzburg or Shanghai, but never yet on the African continent.
The choice of Dakar is more a matter of chance encounters made by the designers of the house and the growing cultural influence of the Senegalese capital than a commercial strategy targeting Africa, says Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel's fashion activities.
"Loyal Customers"
Dakar "has given birth to talents at the forefront of artistic creation, in all fields (dance, music, contemporary art, fashion, cinema, literature, etc.) which are dear to the House", he says. .
A Chanel show in Dakar, December 6, 2022 © JOHN WESSELS / AFP
As for the old court, disused in the mid-2000s to the point of becoming a dump now purged, it is "one of the most beautiful places in which we have had the opportunity to present a collection", says the artistic director .
The palace has for several years been the receptacle of cultural events such as the Biennial of Contemporary African Art.
The Métiers d'art 2022/2023 fashion show is the high point of a three-day program presented as a platform for artistic exchange.
The show was preceded by a choreographic performance resulting from the collaboration between the Frenchman Dimitri Chamblas and the École des sables, Germaine Acogny's creative center south of Dakar.
Chanel asked students from Kourtrajmé film schools in Montfermeil, in the Paris suburbs, and Dakar to document the show.
In January 2023, the 19M, the space inaugurated by Chanel in 2021 in the north of Paris to house 11 of the art houses working for it, will set up in Dakar a gallery outside the walls dedicated to the crafts of embroidery and weaving, with the assistance of the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa.
In May, the gallery programs of 19M-Dakar will be presented in Paris and the resident art houses of 19M will open up to Senegalese students.
A model before the Chanel show in Dakar, December 6, 2022 © JOHN WESSELS / AFP
Asked about the desire to create a commercial bridgehead in Africa, Bruno Pavlovsky recalls that, if there is no fashion boutique, Chanel is present in Dakar through distributors selling its perfumes, beauty products and glasses. .
He evokes "a certain number of loyal customers" in Senegal.
“Ultimately, everything is possible, but this will require studying that the conditions are met to set up in this new market,” he says.
© 2022 AFP