Maybe being in Chanel Bleu face Timothée Chalamet’s orbit earned Hugh Grant a front row seat at the brand’s Metiers d’Art (pre-fall) show in Manchester. It can’t have been his performance at a press conference this week to promote the upcoming film Wonka, in which Grant plays Chalamet’s Oompa Loompa. “I couldn’t have hated the whole thing more,” he said. “I have lots of children and need money.”
Grant seems miserable every time he does anything celebrities get to do, like go to the Oscars or star in a major motion picture. (Actually, Grant might have been a good fashion editor, because he always wears the same thing and seems impressed by nothing, but I digress.) Maybe he was equally miserable sitting under the Perspex tent Chanel erected over a Manchester street for Friday’s show. That Grant, Tilda Swinton, Kristen Stewart, and Sofia Coppola were in Manchester for Fashion was a big deal for Manchester, and continued the trend of fashion shows shutting down city streets and disrupting thriving metropolises for off-season shows. First Pharrell shut down part of Paris for his Louis Vuitton menswear debut, then Balenciaga shut down a street in L.A. this past weekend for a pre-fall display that involved trolling us with Erewhon grocery bags.
Manchester, critics noted, is a different kind of city. This isn’t the land where Kardashians roam free or where groceries are known for existing in a luxury format. As Jess Cartner-Morley writes in the Guardian:
Chanel is pearls, Manchester is all grit. Chanel is the mecca of status handbags, Manchester the city described by the historian AJP Taylor as “the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery”.
Chanel chose Manchester because this is where Coco discovered a love of tweed, which she brought with her to Paris and made a signature of her line. The collection included a lot of tweed, but it always does, and for the most part could have plausibly been shown in any number of cities, its inspiration cast as such.
The impact of this collection was never going to be on how we dress, really. Creative director Virginie Viard has settled into showing wearable stuff that sells rather than anything cutting edge, so it was unlikely for this show to suggest a big new trend or, say, reimagine the contents of a recycling bin as fashion. No, the greatest impact of this show might be on the city of Manchester itself.
Chanel’s president of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky said that Chanel has a policy of relying on locals where possible, rather than transporting everything needed for a show from Paris. Chanel paid undisclosed sums to businesses that had to close for days to accommodate the runway show and had proprietors sign NDAs so they wouldn’t blab to the press about it.
Councilor Luthfur Rahman, Manchester's cabinet member for culture, didn’t say how much Chanel paid to stage the show in the city, but that it was “great for Manchester and is great for our ambition to be a global destination.” He continued, "The fact that Chanel have chosen to come to Manchester demonstrates that we're doing something right." Hotels and restaurants were booked throughout the week for various events relating to the show.
But not all locals were happy about it. Thomas Street was closed for weeks leading up to the show, with nearby streets closing closer to the event. The owner of a bar on an affected street said that foot traffic fell leading up to the event because patrons assumed businesses were closed, and didn’t know if the amount Chanel paid for closing for two days would cover it.
Additionally, Chanel had brand-approved glamazons with Manchester roots like Liam Gallagher’s children Lennon and Gene in attendance. But the brand asked non-nepo babies living on Thomas Street to dim their lights and not go on their balconies. One resident told the Daily Mail that he began receiving letters about the show around three weeks earlier. (The show ended up being disrupted anyway, not by the sight of average people on balconies, but by a pro-Palestine protest yards from the runway.)
One thing locals rather enjoyed about Chanel’s presence was the tent over Thomas Street, which has been dubbed “the Chanel tunnel.” It’s not just any old street covering, but a couture structure made just for that street. Chanel has offered Manchester the chance to keep it, though it has to be taken down now because it was erected under a temporary license and bureaucracy prevents it from being left up. If the city decides to put it back, that would result in a “significant” cost, a source told the Manchester Evening News.
There is something grotesquely capitalistic about luxury fashion brands taking over select streets in cities and bending local governments and residents to their will, all for the sake of marketing displays. You can kind of imagine where this is all going. One day, a designer will decide they’re inspired by air traffic controllers. And instead of building an airplane in a venue the way Karl Lagerfeld once did, they’ll just dip into the company’s bottomless bag of money and pay government officials to shut down the whole airport for two days. And everyone who might need to use that airport will just have to sit there and take it.
What did you think of this Chanel show? Sound off in the comments!
Earlier in Back Row:
