The Malta Independent 7 May 2024, Tuesday
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A summer of Joie de Vivre

Marie Benoît Saturday, 3 February 2024, 08:00 Last update: about 4 months ago

"This Spring-Summer 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection is an ode to liberty and to movement, and tells a story that has its origins in the gardens of the villa Noailles," explains Chanel's artistic director, Virginie Viard.

 

A short distance from the sea, up in the hills of Hyères, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles' modernist villa, designed by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1923, bathes in sunlight. Its many terraced gardens, surrounded by bays through which the landscape is cut into just as many images, offer an idyllic freedom.

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Facing south, the villa's outdoor spaces - from its cubist chequered garden to its sunken flower beds - light up the Chanel Spring-Summer 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection with an intense vitality. The exhilaration of light and colour, the profusion of geometric patterns, the play of contrasting asymmetries, patchworks, lines, checks and stripes give rhythm to a collection that sets out its own idea of elegance and insouciance, components of the allure so dear to the Artistic Director of Chanel's Fashion collections.

There are dressing gowns in multicoloured, black or pink tweed, and jackets in striped terrycloth of every colour. Suits in neoprene, dresses and trousers in lace are adorned with floral motifs. This joie de vivre extends to short dresses and a top in sunray pleats, striped Bermuda shorts, and double-breasted jackets worn open with hands in pockets.

"Sophistication and informality, the tweed throughout the collection, sportswear and lace: I tried to bring one thing and its opposite together in the coolest way possible. And the gardens and swimming pool of the villa Noailles, that exceptional setting, lend themselves to that rather well."

Buoyed by an ambiance of joy, sport and celebration, the elegantly carefree Spring-Summer 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection is an invitation to enjoy life in the fresh air.


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