The China Mail - Feathers fly at Chanel's Paris fashion return

The famed French house turned the newly refurbished Belle Epoque edifice into a giant aviary, with a white birdcage at its centre to show off a collection festooned with plumes and feathers.

Only a day earlier British designer Stella McCartney had lamented the "billions of birds killed for the fashion industry" after the animal rights campaigner's own bird-themed Paris show.

But there were plumes aplenty at Chanel -- a favourite of its founder Gabrielle Chanel -- as it celebrated her fascination with birds and flight.

The cage in the centre of the glass and steel nave was also a knowing nod to Chanel's iconic bird on a swing advert from 1992 starring French singer Vanessa Paradis and her black tail feathers.

Elvis Presley's granddaughter Riley Keough took Paradis's place on the swing to sing this time.

With the main entrance of the Grand Palais now bearing Gabrielle Chanel's name as a part of a 30-million-euro ($33-million) deal to stage its shows at the Paris landmark, the brand wanted to plant a flag during uncertain times.

- No rush for new designer -

Without a creative director since June after Virginie Viard -- who took over from Lagerfeld after his death in 2019 -- bowed out, Chanel's studio designed the spring summer collection, riffing on some of the label's standards, from its trademark tweeds to lacy flapper dresses and flying jackets.

Chanel's more austere convent-inspired black and white ensembles were lifted by slashed skirts and sleeves. But it was the feathers that stood out, used in ruff-like collars on crocheted bombers and on 1920s-style gowns inspired by the glamour of French writer Colette's forays into musical hall and cabaret.

Chanel chief Bruno Pavlovsky told AFP that the French company would not be rushed into finding a replacement for Viard, who was Lagerfeld's righthand woman for decades.

With the big luxury Paris houses seeing profits fall as Chinese buyers button their purses, he said it was "the time for us to bounce back. Virginie did a great job over the last five years -- indeed these last 30 years when she was at Karl's side.

"We are just at the end of a cycle and the brand must start a new one," Pavlovsky told AFP before the show.

"You should not have a knife at our throat" if you are going to make "the right choices", he insisted, saying there would likely to be an annoucement by the end of the year.

"The strength of the brand is that it can take its time because we have (studio) teams who are super solid. All that gives us strength at a time when we could have been disturbed or weakened -- but we are not," Pavlovsky added.

W.Tam--ThChM