The Spring Summer 2020 fashion season is a pivotal one for CHANEL, with the global fashion crowd watching with eyes peeled as newly appointed creative director — Virginie Viard follows up on her prior solo debut that marked a noticeable revision to Karl Lagerfeld’s CHANEL codes. If there’s one thing that permeated across this season’s offerings that differ from what is expected of her predecessor, it’s the lack of ostentatious embellishments and an evident focus on the idea of new essentials.
Ease and sensibility were suggested as the grounding themes for this collection, and with society-at-large being the way it is now, we’d dare say that Viard couldn’t have better foresight with this collection when appealing to our inclination to purchase just the essentials. Of late, the non-stop churning of the fashion machine to produce anything hype-worthy, with a newness for the sake of newness mentality, has become quite the exhausting story (for everyone in the industry).
Fashion thrives on the idea that shopping can cure all of life’s existing problems; that’s its main argument for its own survival after all. But the global health scare we are still living in today has rocked the foundation of fashion’s stronghold — both on what our desires truly are, as well as our own understanding of what all of us really want when buying luxury. It’s truly not about buying something we can share on social media for likes that matter anymore, but something that lasts the test of time.
So, here’s why we would actually make the considered decision to buy into CHANEL SS20 accessories. To begin, what is perfected with these latest accessories is how similar they are to most of their classic pieces, with a touch or two updates that separates them from what a sartorially-conscious mum might already have in her closet.
Think familiar colour combinations (black-white-beige) for its footwear with a different approach to its overall composition, or finished with a layer of sparkles as opposed to the shine of buttery leather. Tweed, a CHANEL mainstay textile, reworked in a vibrant shade complimenting its youthful silhouette. Ditto for their quilted matelassé bags with a beautiful if forgettable charm dangling on its strap, that doubles as a functional, essential detail to adjust its length to our individual preferences when we carry them.
This time around, where the magic lies with CHANEL SS20 is not simply that they are trendy present-day must-haves. But these offerings instead carry the same promise from all those years ago when your mum got her hands on her first Classic Flap. Yes, that same bag that she continues to carry with immense pride to the envious roaming glances of everyone else today. While never explicitly mentioned, this bag and that shoe already come all-inclusive with the intangible fee of timelessness.
Imagine 10, 20 years from now, on a day away from your rowdy kids with your closest fashion-forward pals, wearing something from CHANEL SS20 with no one the wiser from when it was really from. Wouldn’t the dear thousands you have spent decades ago suddenly seem so, so worth it? We’d say so.
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