Virginie Viard

Virginie Viard led Chanel’s collections from Karl Lagerfeld’s death in February 2019 until her departure in June 2024. She had spent more than thirty years in its studios before taking the top job. Her Chanel retained tweed, pearls and camellias, often with a softer line and less theatrical staging than the Lagerfeld years. Matthieu Blazy succeeded her and showed his first collection in October 2025. (Fox News; Hypebeast)

Learning the house from the inside

Viard was born in 1962 and trained at Le Cours Georges, a costume design school, where she specialised in costume for film and theatre rather than ready-to-wear. Early work as an assistant to costume designer Dominique Borg led to credits on Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours: Blue (1993) and Three Colours: White (1994). (Highsnobiety)

She joined Chanel in 1987 as an intern in the haute couture embroidery workshop, a placement that came through a family connection to the chamberlain of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Embroidery is one of the couture métiers that finishes a garment rather than constructs it — applying beading, sequins and thread work to cloth already cut — and it put her inside the atelier system Lagerfeld relied on before she ever worked with him directly. (Highsnobiety)

Thirty years as Lagerfeld's right hand

In 1992 Viard followed Lagerfeld to Chloé, where he was also creative director, and spent five years there as his design assistant before both returned to Chanel in 1997. Back at Chanel she ran the fashion creation studio — the team that translates a creative director's sketches and references into patterns, fittings and finished looks — and from 2000 her responsibilities widened to cover ready-to-wear alongside haute couture and accessories. Lagerfeld called her plainly indispensable: "Virginie is the most important person… She is my right arm." (Highsnobiety)

As head of the fashion creation studio, Viard helped turn Lagerfeld’s ideas into finished clothes. She chose fabrics, supervised fittings and worked with the ateliers across ready-to-wear and couture. That long familiarity with the people making Chanel’s collections shaped her own tenure more than any conspicuous break with the house’s codes. (Highsnobiety)

When Lagerfeld died on 19 February 2019, Chanel's owner Alain Wertheimer named her his successor the same day, in a statement crediting her as "Director of Chanel's Fashion Creation Studio and Karl Lagerfeld's closest collaborator for more than 30 years," so that "the legacy of Gabrielle Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld can live on." She became the first woman to lead the house's design since Coco Chanel herself. (Fox News)

A quieter Chanel

Viard's first collection under her own name was Chanel's Cruise 2020 show in May 2019, presented at the Palais-Royal in Paris just months after Lagerfeld's death. As creative director, she kept Chanel's established vocabulary — tweed, camellias, the quilted bag, pearls — but pared it back. Coverage of her work described "her preference for simplicity" and a signature that mixed "soft femininity" with "rock-and-roll edge," building on Lagerfeld's codes rather than discarding or dramatising them. (10 Magazine; Vogue Scandinavia)

Her Cruise 2022 show used a spare black-and-white palette at Les Baux-de-Provence. Later presentations ranged from a runway surrounded by tweed to a Métiers d’Art show in Dakar with local dance and music. Viard worked within Chanel’s familiar materials but changed the mood from collection to collection. (10 Magazine)

Reviewers often admired individual Viard pieces for their scale and craft while finding some complete shows less convincing. The Dakar collection drew particular praise; other looks were criticised for combinations that obscured good workmanship. That uneven reception belongs beside the quieter, wearable clothes that found an audience in stores. (The Interior Review)

An abrupt exit, no reason given

Chanel confirmed Viard's departure on 6 June 2024, describing "a rich collaboration of five years as artistic director of fashion collections, during which she was able to renew the codes of the house while respecting the creative heritage of Chanel." No successor was named at the time, and Chanel said an announcement would follow "in due course." The house gave no reason for the exit, which came despite strong commercial results: chief executive Leena Nair said Chanel's ready-to-wear sales had "surged two-and-a-half-times since 2018" under Viard's direction. (Malay Mail; The National)

Viard did not attend Chanel's Fall/Winter 2024/25 haute couture show on 25 June 2024, held at the Opéra Garnier — her last scheduled collection, completed and shown under the house's Fashion Creation Studio rather than her own name. Chanel named Matthieu Blazy, previously of Bottega Veneta, as creative director on 12 December 2024; he presented his debut collection, Chanel's Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear, at the Grand Palais in Paris on 6 October 2025. (FashionWeekDaily; Hypebeast; Malay Mail)

Placing a Viard-era garment

Chanel's internal labelling does not spell out a creative director's name, so an item cannot be dated to Viard by its label alone — collection codes, hologram or serial-number formats, and the season printed inside the garment are the tools for that, and they changed little in form across her tenure. What separates her period from Lagerfeld's is largely stylistic: expect quieter surface treatment, tweed used more often in soft, unstructured shapes than as rigid tailoring, and accessories — bag chains, camellia hardware — that are simplified relative to Lagerfeld's more maximal versions of the same codes. Because her final couture collection was finished by the studio after her exit was announced, a piece from the Fall/Winter 2024/25 couture line sits at the exact seam between her design language and the transition to Blazy, and should not be read as evidence of her personal direction on every look. Earlier archive pieces bearing Lagerfeld's more ornate hand, by contrast, predate her tenure regardless of when they were sold at retail.

References

• Fox News. "Chanel names Karl Lagerfeld's successor: Virginie Viard." 19 February 2019.
• Highsnobiety. "5 Things You Need to Know About Chanel's New Creative Director Virginie Viard." 2019.
• Vogue Scandinavia. "How Virginie Viard Is Making Chanel Her Own."
• 10 Magazine. "10 Defining Moments of Virginie Viard's Chanel."
• The Interior Review. "Does Chanel's Virginie Viard See the Bigger Picture?" 3 October 2023.
• Malay Mail. "Chanel's creative director Virginie Viard to exit brand, Business of Fashion reports." 6 June 2024.
• The National. "As Virginie Viard steps down from Chanel, who might replace her?" 6 June 2024.
• FashionWeekDaily. "Chanel's Fall 2024 Couture Collection Goes to the Opera, Sans Virginie Viard." June 2024.
• Hypebeast. "Matthieu Blazy Confirmed As Chanel's Creative Director." 12 December 2024.
• Malay Mail. "Matthieu Blazy launches Chanel into a new orbit with celestial Paris debut." 7 October 2025.