For the past 20 years, Chanel has dedicated a fashion show to the know-how of its craftsmen, essential to the fashion house. And it is in Dakar that she has decided to set down her bags.
Since 2002, the Métiers d’Art fashion show has been a must for the House of Chanel. After Tokyo, New York, Shanghai and Edinburgh, Chanel flies to Africa to celebrate its artisanal heritage and the richness of its crafts.
By choosing Dakar, Senegal, Chanel intends to resonate with the city’s artistic energy. On 6 December, the Métiers d’art 2022/23 collection was presented in the heart of the former Palais de Justice. Virginie Viard, the artistic director of the Maison, has entrusted the filmmaker Ladj Ly and students from the Kourtrajmé school in Montfermeil and Dakar with the production of a series of documentaries about the Maison and the event.
Created in 1994, Kourtrajmé (the reverse of “short film”) is a French association working in the audiovisual field. Now present in Montfermeil, Marseille, Madrid and Dakar since January 2022, it offers training in the film industry and is open to all, free of charge and without pre-requisites.
A series of four videos has been produced, filmed between the Chanel creative studio on rue Cambon in Paris, the 19M located between Paris and Aubervilliers, and Dakar. The first episode of this series reveals the final preparations for the collection in the Chanel workshops, mixed with the atmosphere of Dakar where choreographer Dimitri Chamblas and the dancers from the École des Sables rehearse under the watchful eye of Virginie Viard. The film of the show will be unveiled on Thursday 8 December at 2pm on the brand’s website.
“The idea is to take an approach that goes beyond the event itself: it’s not just a question of making the brand shine for 20 minutes of the show. We wanted to organize the first exhibition of the Galerie du 19M outside the walls in Dakar (…) It is also an opportunity for us to launch training programs for students and professors who will be able to come and train in Paris in these exceptional fields that we support and that we want to see continue to attract young talent”, explains Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Chanel SAS, to the newspaper Le Point.
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Featured photo : © DR
