Although she is now the creative director for a multi-billion-dollar global brand and her workload has changed exponentially, Viard has resisted any effort to adapt her private life. While Lagerfeld famously surrounded himself by turns with world-class art deco treasures, then museum-quality 18th-century decorative arts, then state-of-the-art contemporary design, Viard lives in the same artist’s atelier in the unfashionable 14th arrondissement that she bought 20 years ago and sees no reason to upgrade. “I love it,” she explains. “Karl was always laughing because I never wanted to change anything: If I bought a new car, it was exactly like the old one!”
Viard spent lockdown with her partner, the composer and music producer Jean-Marc Fyot (whom she describes as “mon fiancé”), and their 25-year-old son, Robinson, in the modest village house in Drôme Provençale that she bought 20 years ago. (At the time, Fyot described it as “a squat”, although Viard has since made some home improvements.) Fortunately, Viard was between collections when France went into strict quarantine, having recently launched the Métiers d’Art collection and planned the spring/summer 2021 ready-to-wear. In the country, she distracted herself with bicycle rides, swimming in her pool, and cooking and cleaning. “It de-stresses me to see the results,” she explains.
When she returned to Paris and a studio full of masked accomplices, Viard plunged into work on the eclectic spring/summer 2021 collection, which she is now unveiling beneath the writhing art nouveau ironwork of the Grand Palais against a set that mimics the iconic Hollywood sign but spells Chanel.
“It’s a very different season,” said the show’s producer, Etienne Russo, “but we have to adapt.” Fyot is on hand for support, rock-star chic in skinny black leather jeans and a hoodie under his daytime tuxedo, while Viard, dressed to match in a lean black Chanel coat to the ankles, narrow pants, and patent Chelsea boots, is preternaturally calm. She has done this dozens of times before, of course, and the Chanel machine ensures that everything happens like clockwork even while the support teams are all masked and the models have been tested for Covid.
The collection begins cinematically with Christophe’s music, which appropriates some lines from an old movie – Viard thinks it is Max Ophüls’s 1955 Lola Montès – and she is thrilled that the final grouping of Jazz Age black and white ensembles that she sees on the monitor reminds her of the stylised blocking in Marienbad.
Viard, who disdains personal social media and would still rather stay in the shadows, winces before she steps front of stage for the necessary bow. “She wants her work to be in the light, rather than her,” says de Maigret. “I find it so modern.”
Backstage, Viard’s friends congratulate her. “It’s glamorous and luxurious,” says the musician Sébastien Tellier, “but it’s a caress – it’s light, it’s super sweet.” As Kristen Stewart, watching across the Atlantic, puts it: “She’s really finding herself and projecting her voice as an artist. I can hear it loud and clear.”
