Chanel hosts pared-down show as virus keeps many VIPs away

PARIS (AP) — Louis Vuitton staged a dazzling cinematic fashion production to cap Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday, with a wall of around 200 human figures dressed in elite fashions spanning human history.

Chanel staged a comparatively low-key affair for Paris Fashion Week as the coronavirus outbreak kept many of the regular VIPs and fashion editors away. The stalwart Parisian design house streamed its show online. Some guests who came to see Chanel's fall collection up close on Tuesday wore CC-branded face masks.

Restraint was also evoked in Chanel artistic director Virginie Viard's collection in a marked departure from her showman predecessor and mentor, the late Karl Lagerfeld. Although the display took place at the Grand Palais exhibition hall on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, simplicity was the Chanel “mot du jour" — from the set of tiered white steps to the pared-down aesthetic of monochrome.

Here are some highlights on the last day of Paris Fashion Week for fall-winter 2020 ready-to-wear.

CHANEL SEEKS SIMPLICITY

Chanel artistic director Virginie Viard's collection for Paris Fashion Week this season was a marked departure from her showman predecessor and mentor, the late Karl Lagerfeld.

“A very simple, very pure momentum. Romanticism, but without any flourishes," is how Viard described her designs.

Evoking French film director Claude Chabrol's 1968 film “The Does,” a drama about seduction that focused on bisexual lovers, female models walked the runway together and chatted like intimates for the first looks. The models wore stylish retro black leather boots, ones with a brandy bell-shaped collar at the mid-calf that turned out to be the collection's leitmotif.

Viard's simplest designs were the most effective: A black silk bodice dress with the top lobbed...