Xavier Veilhan - CHANEL Spring-Summer 2023 Haute-Couture Show, Paris, France: Event

After imagining "embracing" spaces, playful and labyrinthine, for the Spring-Summer 2022 and Fall-Winter 2022/23 Haute Couture collections, this season Xavier Veilhan goes beyond the idea of décor and stages an animated bestiary, made up of monumental mobile sculptures. "Virginie Viard asked me if I could work around the idea of Gabrielle Chanel's apartment and its bestiary, where we first got together at the beginning of our collaboration. I found it interesting to start from this bestiary to evoke the relationship to animals which is constantly evolving in our societies. This time I wanted to move towards something immediate and straight-forward, with lightness and fantasy, without being naive," explains the artist.

 

This theme of the bestiary, which has been very present in Xavier Veilhan's work since his first exhibitions, mostly takes the form of life size or oversized sculptures of the animal. Here the doe, the horse, the lion, the camel, the bird, fishes, the buffalo, the elephant, the dog and the croco-chien (croco-dog) are the main protagonists. Made of cardboard, wood and paper, these animal figures adopt a simplified and stylised form whose architecture is radically different from naturalism.

 

Lights, parade-like animal procession, the simplicity of the scenographic device evokes a spontaneous village festivity. As with the two previous décors, Xavier Veilhan has worked alongside the set designer Alexis Bertrand.