10 May 2023 |
Once upon a time in Hollywood, aerobics studios and roller-skating ruled whilst John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis set pulses racing with their pelvic thrusts in the body beautiful movie Perfect. For her blockbuster cruise show held on the Paramout Studio lot, Chanel’s Virginie Viard, bypassed golden age Hollywood glamour (when Coco dressed the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Claudette Colbert, and created costumes for George Cukor and Jean Renoir). Instead, Viard homed in on LA’s ‘let’s get physical,’ era, embodied by workout queens Jane Fonda and Cindy Crawford and the 1980s parade of beautiful bodies, rolling or strolling down the Venice Beach boardwalk. “From John Travolta to Jane Fonda, so many actresses, the body, the gym, aerobics,” Viard said of her inspiration for her cruise collection. “Un peu sport, un peu tweed.”
The soundtrack for the 1992 psycho-sexual thiller, Basic Instinct boomed as the first, big-haired model bounced down the runway in teeny tiny, crystal-trimmed dolphin shorts, a crop top and white sneakers. Paris Hilton was in the audience but her 90210 sensibilities were all over the catwalk. Bedazzled, cut-out swimsuits were worn with Chanel-logo legwarmers, knitted tweed shorts suits came in barbie-core pink, ombre denim hot pants jostled with ice blue satin tracksuits, ears were timed with marabou hoops, heads adorned with rainbow bucket hats. One model wore a onesie emblazoned with fuzzy neon palm trees, another carried a Chanel skateboard. The mood was playful (wedge-heeled sneekers anyone?), youthful (skateboard pendants and rainbow bucket hats) and LA casual (yes, you can wear jewels with your swimsuit), but it was all done with Chanel’s artisan eye.
With Margot Robbie, Riley Keough, Marion Cotillard and Kristen Stewart in attendance and Snoop Dogg on the decks, the show segued into a party as showgoers played in a vast, Instagramable theme park of flashing Neon signs, showboating roller skaters and mountains of caviar. Hilton would probably say “That’s hot” and she wouldn’t be wrong.
Photography courtesy of Chanel.
