I have never attended couture fashion week as a guest of Chanel. If I had to guess what it feels like to get a camellia-topped invitation for the first time, get dressed by the house, and sit feet away from the Fall 2024 collection as it glides by, I can imagine it's an opulent moment. Anna Sawai, star of FX's Shogun, similarly tells me she wasn't sure what to expect from her first Chanel couture show on Tuesday. Preparing to ascend the steps at Paris's Palais Garnier, home of the opera and this season's runway, Sawai did know how she wanted to dress the part.
"I was able to try on very different outfits and it was hard to choose because it really was so different," Sawai tells me a few hours after her front row debut. She and stylist Karla Welch were caught between two routes headed in aesthetically opposing directions: one sweet and soft look, one edgy and all-leather.
In the end, Sawai took the road with less excess: a leather waistcoat and coordinating Bermuda shorts, straight from Chanel's Cruise 2024/25 collection that debuted earlier this spring. It was the closest, Sawai says, to how she really dresses. "I felt like going to these kind of shows, I wanted to at least feel grounded and be my own self."
Bringing the rest of the look together was a lesson in juxtaposition. Sawai chose pointed-toe heels to up the elegance factor of her matching set's biker-chic energy. "And for my hair and makeup, we wanted to kind of balance it out," she explains.
With makeup artist Yumi Mori and hairstylist Jennifer Yepez, Sawai leaned into classics: a fresh makeup look with rosy, glowing pink blush, a sleek bun with pieces pulled out to frame her face. And even then, the actress wanted to incorporate another contrasting element: "We also topped it off with a beautiful Chanel ribbon, which I think is like a cherry on top."
Once Sawai made it to her seat, she wasn't necessarily swept away by the hanging chandeliers and velvet-lined steps at the opera house. Her eye went straight to the more understated pieces amid the over-the-top lineup.
When I ask if there's a look she'd wear off the runway, Sawai speaks directly to my New York City uniform dresser heart. "They had some nice black looks and I am a pretty simple girl," she laughs. A dress layered with chandelier beads and embroidery—plus a mesh skirt—spoke to her for "a fancy, fancy dinner."
Guests who've filed into the same seats and watched the same models for season after season can maybe feel jaded by the whole affair. Seeing it for the first time, Sawai soaked in the details that might be overlooked in a recap Instagram story.
"I wasn't expecting it to be such a theatrical experience," she says. She paid close attention to not just the clothes, but the way they were presented. "We heard the footsteps of the models. I thought it was just being played as a tape, but there was actually a guy holding the mic at her footsteps." Turning her focus to a beaded belt became a runway ASMR exercise: "You can hear them hitting each other and making this very high toned beautiful ring."
Maybe Sawai was looking for those details so closely because she'd seen them in progress just a day before—a sneak-peek not every showgoer gets. Ahead of the runway, she also went to visit artisans at the Chanel atelier, hard at work on the final feathers, beads, and camellia flowers involved in each look.
"I learned how much time it takes and how many people really it takes to create like one flower—and to see that all come together and form into this beautiful look," Sawai says. "The whole experience itself was just like a new and very, very opulent experience for me and the appreciation for all that goes into it is so important, too."
For some guests, today's show is the first and last time onlookers will see them in their best tweeds and collarless jackets—at least until the following season's runway. Sawai's next Chanel moment will come a little earlier. In the second season of Apple TV's Pachinko, which premieres this August, the actress suits up as the high-powered lawyer Naomi in vintage suits from the house.
The way Sawai describes it, dressing for an intergenerational period drama isn't all that different from dressing for a present-day front row. When her onscreen persona wears Chanel, she's tapping into her power. "My character is a lady in the eighties who is having to face masculinity in her company," she explains. "Gabrielle Chanel fought for the liberation of women, and making them comfortable."
And while Sawai may be more familiar with walking onto a prestige TV set than walking up the steps to a couture show, she still gets the same feeling where her wardrobe is involved: "I feel so lucky that I was able to wear a Chanel suit on that, too." Once again, her clothes keep her grounded.
