CHANEL Métiers d’art 2024-25 “A Dream Folded in Silk”. Story by RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Chanel.
In the Chanel universe, travel has never meant transit. It means transformation. And this season, for the 2024/25 Métiers d’art collection, Chanel charts an ethereal voyage from 31 rue Cambon to Hangzhou’s West Lake — not by map, but by memory.
Shot by Mikael Jansson in the same hazy light that cloaked the December runway, the campaign unfurls like a lacquered scroll — lacquered, of course, in Gabrielle Chanel’s taste. Her beloved Coromandel screens, 19th-century Chinese treasures that once guarded her Parisian apartment, serve as both muse and portal. Through them, the imagination drifts east, to a mist-veiled lake in Hangzhou, where shadows move like ink across silk.
Tilda Swinton, Liu Wen, and Lulu Tenney guide us through this reverie — neither quite in Paris nor in China, neither quite in today nor a century ago. They wear the dream like armor: black satin charmeuse, pleated like calligraphy by Lognon; camellias blooming in velvet lace from Lemarié; and constellations of aged gold drawn by the hand of Goossens. Each look is a whisper from the artisans — Lesage, Montex, Massaro, Paloma — whose genius underpins the Métiers d’art collections and whose virtuosity requires no overture.
Black dominates. Not as void, but as depth — lacquered, embossed, dripping with chiaroscuro mystery. A long leather coat, cinched at the waist, wears a camellia like a seal. Elsewhere, satin flows like morning light across pleated ivory, rendered into architectural softness by Lognon. The silhouettes are impossibly light, but never lost — anchored always by the discipline of craft.
There is movement here — not haste, but hush. A belted blouse reveals the outline of a vest beneath, embroidered just enough to be sensed, not seen. The boots are patent leather, the heels quilted into memory foam of another time. And somewhere in the mix: travel bags in glossy leather, a vanity case that might once have been a treasure chest, and the new CHANEL 25 bag — now glittering in black tweed, like night catching fire.
But perhaps the most haunting element is the dialogue — between East and West, past and present, reality and its reflection. The Coromandel screen doesn’t merely inspire a motif. It dares CHANEL to reimagine fashion as a landscape of possibility, where clothing isn’t just worn but wandered through.
This is not a collection. It is a procession — of craftsmanship, of culture, of couture. From Paris to Hangzhou, from dream to design, CHANEL’s Métiers d’art 2024/25 doesn’t show us where to go. It reminds us that elegance, like memory, never stays still.
