It could have gone really bad. Chanel optics, one of Europe's finest luxury brands, parachuted into Africa, a continent with no shops and no meaningful business, with a one-off fashion show bells and whistles that might have been smacked louder, than colonial.
Especially because it was the first show of its kind ever in sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Dakar, Senegal, once part of the French Empire and now a country with a thriving fashion culture and heritage of its own, especially considering that Chanel has no singular history. particular with the region ("I can't say that Madame Chanel dreamed of coming to Dakar," said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel's head of fashion).
It especially comes on the heels of fashion missteps when it comes to diversity and inclusivity, acknowledging its own multiple missteps with cultural appropriation.
that Chanel Métiers d'Art show, Held at the Palais de Justice in Dakar earlier this week, it kicked off with just one touch of reaction on Twitter and is testament to the effort the house has made to rework the exercise.
Rather than just a fashion show designed to lure a new market into spending a lot of money, it is designed as a three-day festival following Dakar Fashion Week designed to highlight the country's talents in art, dance, music and literature. In other words, less as an outlandish shortcut to fresh inspiration than as a celebration of the counterparts.
In this, he represented a huge step forward, albeit an imperfect one.
However, in focusing the spotlight on the diverse group of collaborators around the show, including Senegalese rapper Nicks, singer Aubrey Daman and local dance teacher Ecole des Sables, placing the connections between them and Chanel somewhere on the abstract plane of the mind. Making the clothes themselves look like the least.
Still: clothes. They were, according to the show's notes, inspired by the "pop-soul-funk-disco-punk decade" of the 1970s, as opposed to anything as obvious as traditional Senegalese motifs, materials or artisan technique (the elaborate craftsmanship of the group, designed to showcase the work of many From the specialized workshops Chanel bought to preserve her know-how, they were all made in France). Which means, as it turns out, mostly...pants. Knit, boucle, flared, denim, they are often combined with sweatshirts and blouses, jackets or jackets.
Designer Virginie Viard could make a great classic Chanel dress, and she did here, with some lacy crochet looks, cocktail garden party dresses, and siren evening numbers, but she was saddled with offerings that seemed better suited to an adventurous tribe—bourgeois hippies.
If there was any imaginary line between place and products, it was in the breadth of colors and the layers of the cut: an embroidered jacket over a boucle jacket; a chic wrap skirt over some tight knit flares; A long, ripped jacket over a pair of faded jeans, held by a gold belt. Of the 62 models in the show, 19 are Africans and 12 are Senegalese. The hair and makeup teams were about half local and half foreign, mr. Pavlovsky said.
Mostly, the clothes seemed like an excuse to bring the 850 people, about 500 of them from all over Africa, to Dakar. Including celebrities like Pharrell Williams, Whitney Peck, and Neil Rogers (though not this critic; I've watched from afar, like most consumers), the city's reputation as a cultural hub, Chanel as a kind of creative, well - what? Kingmaker or global power participant?
The line between these two positions isn't quite so clear (it probably depends on where you're sitting), however, where the discomfort lies.
Chanel, who received the support of President Macky Sall and the Ministry of Culture for this event, intends to continue working with local talents, and in January she will return to Dakar for 19 AD A program (19M is the official name for the headquarters of Specialized Ateliers) that will focus on work created alongside local embroiderers and artisans. This will then form the basis of a subsequent exhibition hosted by the brand in Paris. said mr. Pavlovsky, their Dakar experience may serve as a model for a different kind of cultural exchange/group experience going forward.
"It's hard to be creative if you're stuck on the Rue Cambon in Paris," he said.
Would Chanel buy a private Senegalese weaving workshop the way it bought European ateliers like Lesage and Maison Michel, the better to preserve their knowledge? the master. Pavlovsky said there were no such plans, but he could imagine a future, perhaps, where that would be possible.
For now, said Ami Diao, a curator who attended the show, despite some problems like scheduling the show on the same day as the founding anniversary of the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, the brand is being stretched for the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, said Mrs. Diaw, "This runway of Chanel will not be a one-off wonder or an opportunistic project to feed Western fashion houses the mega-aesthetic capital of Africa," but rather the beginning of a long-awaited process to honor the vitality of that aesthetic capital.
After all, at Chanel's shows in Paris, the audience generally arrives dressed from head to toe in the finest boucles, camellias, and ropes of pearls. By contrast, the crowd at the Dakar made impressive statements in their own style.
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