There are few things as consistent as the magic of a Chanel couture show under the vaulted glass arches of the Grand Palais. Since Karl Lagerfeld began showing there in 2005, the maison has transformed the space with breathtaking sets that have included an airplane, a Monte-Carlo-esque casino, and last season’s giant double C runway. This year, Chanel is celebrating the 110th anniversary of its haute couture collections, and for fall 2025 decided to mix things up. The address on the invitation indicated that the show would not be in the landmark’s Grand Nave as usual, but instead in the Salon d’Honneur.
On arrival, guests were escorted to the upstairs gallery and though the space was smaller, the mise-en-scène was no less remarkable: a simulacra of the iconic Art Deco mirrored haute couture salons at 31 rue Cambon where Gabrielle Chanel showed her collections from 1918 to 1970 (and which were given a facelift by Jacques Grange in 2021 and are still used for client appointments). Judging by a spring 1962 runway photo included in Chanel Haute Couture—the forthcoming book edited by Sofia Coppola and tracing Chanel’s storied history that was delivered with the invite—set designer Willo Perron gets a gold star for historical accuracy for his baroque gold flourishes, beige curtains, and beige sofas. Though there were no models carrying numbered placards, you could almost imagine that your seatmates were Anouk Aimée and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.
To mark the anniversary, Chanel also produced a special with Coppola in which the filmmaker describes how she wanted her book to approach couture “not in an academic way,” with clothes on mannequins as you would see in a museum. Instead, her edit for the book brings together hundreds of society portraits, event photos, fashion illustrations, and editorial images (including Elle Fanning by Zoe Ghertner and Margaret Qualley and Edie Campbell by Inez & Vinoodh for W). “I thought, oh, I’d love to put together images of how they’re worn in life and who are the women that wear them,” Coppola says. “I … also [wanted to] look at the codes of Chanel, which I love, throughout the years that you can identify with: a bow or a camelia or certain colors and the tweed.”
At fifteen, Sofia Coppola (seen here in the Chanel haute couture salons) left her family home in Northern California for a summer internship at Chanel’s Paris studio—an experience that sparked a lifelong connection with the house and led to numerous creative collaborations over the years.
Courtesy of Chanel
Those codes were in fine form in the fall 2025 collection designed by Chanel’s in-house studio team, particularly the tweed, dyed in soothing autumnal hues of ecru, ivory, brown, black, green, and plum. Classic skirt suits came in both mid-century knee-length styles and a very Gen-Z pairing of a maxi skirt and a cropped jacket, with only the top button closed, so as to reveal a triangle of the abdomen. There was also playful experimentation with trompe l’oeil textures, such as a tweed-feather combination that resembled fur and a bouclé tweed that evoked the appearance of sheepskin.
Golden wheat sheaves—another motif that Gabrielle Chanel adored, and which form the legs of the famous Robert Goossens side table in her private apartment above the couture salons—also featured prominently as embroideries and on jewel-like buttons. Coppola, who interned for Chanel in Paris as a teenager, says that some of her all-time favorite couture stylings were those of Inès de La Fressange and Veronica Webb, who would turn up for fittings wearing Chanel jackets with ripped jeans. And while there wasn’t any Chanel denim in this collection, there was a real sense of groundedness thanks to the knee-high and over-the-knee flat boots paired with all of the looks, which were inspired by Mademoiselle’s love of the British countryside.
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