Internet Delights in Chanel's Big Announcement
Virginie Viard is leaving her job as creative director, and many social media users couldn't be more thrilled.
In today’s Issue of Back Row:
How the internet seemingly prevailed in Chanel’s surprise announcement about Virginie Viard leaving.
What Back Row readers said about the news.
Viard’s potential successors.
Loose Threads, including reports of abysmal work conditions at Dior suppliers, the Jacquemus resort show, and more.
Virginie Viard is leaving her job as creative director for Chanel, and content creators are reacting with the same glee they normally reserve for Zendaya on a Dune red carpet.
The internet discourse surrounding her stepping down has gone something like: Our prayers are answered! This look she did two years ago was hideous — I could barely stomach it! Here are my memes! Bethenny Frankel lollll! Slay, Wertheimer brothers!
(OK, I haven’t seen anyone say the last one, maybe because the Wertheimers stay in the background as much as their $96 billion fortune will allow.)
If anything illustrates the new power balance in fashion media, it’s the disparate tone on Chanel during its Viard era. Since she took over from Karl Lagerfeld after he died in 2019, many social media users posted freely about how ugly they found her clothes. The Instagram account Chanel Flops Again started up (which, I should note, roasted many of Lagerfeld’s look in addition to Viard’s).
And content creators had no qualms about saying stuff like this:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Meanwhile, every time Viard showed, you could count on Vogue to say she “hit all the points” or that she “ma[d]e chic clothes easy for contemporary women.”
I found many of Chanel’s shows under Viard to be unappealing. Sometimes, it was purely a matter of the clothes and styling, as with the ruffs and white bodysuits at her spring 2024 couture show. While she always included perfectly serviceable basics like tweed suits, and I appreciated her showing walkable shoes, her wins were overshadowed by her misses.
Earlier in Back Row:
Under Viard, Chanel also had some awkward moments at its off-season shows. First, the brand showed on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles during the actors’ strike last spring, which meant guests had to pass picketers to enter the venue. While Chanel’s planning for this show was likely done well in advance of the strike, the optics were not great. Last year, the brand showed its Metiers d’Art or pre-fall collection in Manchester, where local businesses were compensated for closing during the event but said the funds may not have made up for the lost foot traffic. Again, the optics were distracting at best.
I asked Back Row readers to share thoughts in the chat on the news of Viard leaving, and many of you agreed that her collections were lacking. “I’m surprised she even lasted five years!” wrote Laura J. GG replied, “I think Chanel’s clothing sales weirdly went up under her even though no one seems to like them. There must some quiet demo for tweed we don’t know about.” Chanel is a private company and only makes available limited financials, so it’s hard to know what’s really going on with sales, but as far as we know, this is true: The brand has said that overall sales increased from $11.1 billion in 2018 before Viard was appointed to $19.7 billion in 2023, while the fashion business more than doubled in 2023 and the ready-to-wear business grew by 23 percent, according to Vogue.
We have some anecdotal evidence to back this up. I interviewed a couple of Chanel employees for Back Row’s “Retail Confessions” column, and one told me:
