Chanel Pre-Fall 2023 Collection | Vogue

“Salam Alaikum Africa!” So sang Obree Daman, flanked by dancers from the École des Sables, at the start out of what will absolutely go down as a milestone Chanel Métiers d’Art present each for the dwelling that presented it and the place that hosted it.

For Chanel to choose to existing its to start with-at any time present in Africa—and at the same time the very first present to be presented by any European or US residence anyplace in Sub-Saharan Africa—was an ambitious transfer indeed. At a fittings appointment pre-demonstrate, backstage in the Senegalese capital’s former Palais de Justice (now home to its art Biennale), Virginie Viard mentioned that the notion to start with took keep a few decades back. Two many years of Covid-enforced hiatus followed, before scouting commenced. “When we initial came to this area, Dakar, it was seriously outstanding, and we knew.” she claimed.

As a single of 800 company you felt the expert context of this show experienced been developed as precisely as the selection itself. The 1st end write-up-arrival was on Gorée island, just offshore from the town, a area that was after a hub of the African slave trade below colonial rule and which is now a monument. There was a take a look at to the studio of sculptor Ousman Sowe, a tour of regional artisan markets and an artwork-crammed medina, and a “literary rendezvous” between Marie NDiaye, Charlotte Casiraghi, and Rokhaya Niang (together with a efficiency by rapper Nix), additionally a quit to see the beautiful home furnishings design and style of Ousmane Mbaye. Chanel’s President, Bruno Pavlovsky, announced a series of future interactions involving Chanel’s le19M and Dakar’s IFAN Museum of African Arts that will see exchanges of artisanal knowledge among the two. As Pharrel Williams set it before the demonstrate: “There’s a serendipity in it remaining a French maison, and coming back to a location that was the moment colonized by the French, with a perception of equity… it’s a super-stunning exercise in humanity.”

The very best descriptor I could find for this workout is “roofoo,” a term in the Wolof language—the lingua franca of Senegal—that was displayed and spelled out in an exhibition at the Atiss Gallery. According to the Atiss’s caption, roofoo is “the intimate combination of threads, of fibers, [that] can be thought of as a metaphor of weaving, which generates a fluid and welded make any difference, inseparable from the materials intrinsically joined. The absorption of the color in the fabric also displays the intimacy that binds them. Textile art and its countless paths highlights the multitude of probable agreements amongst products and procedures.” Additional our information, Olivia: “this is also a phrase that can be applied to folks. It implies a form of chemistry.”