"Fashion show" falls several hundred miles short of describing Chanel's 2024/2025 Métiers d'Art runway, a collection of 60-plus looks presented at nightfall on Hangzhou, China's West Lake, as a serene mist swept over the water's surface. In a way, it was a painting come to life. Or more specifically, a realization of the illustrated scenery on Gabrielle Chanel’s Coromandel screens that still stand in her famed Rue Cambon apartment in Paris. The designer never traveled to China in her lifetime, but the reinterpretation of her screens as romantic silks and bouclé jackets in sunset tones looked like a wearable ticket there.
In another way, the show was an artist's summit, a celebration of creativity in all its forms. Complementing the intricate (and at times size-inclusive) runway looks made by Chanel's Creative Studio was a 1,100-strong guest list filled with masters of their crafts. Included in the lineup was writer, poet, and personal style arbiter Orion Carloto.
In projects like Film for Her, Carloto crafts phrases and images as precisely as Chanel's artisans sewed the beading on an embellished clutch. She got ready for the Métiers d'Art show wanting to honor the scrupulous manner in which Chanel's owned workshops—including the embroiderers at Maison Lesage and the pleaters at Atelier Lognon—approach each garment to make the front row look so beautiful.
"I have a tremendous amount of respect for the atelier and the careful work they’ve put into making each individual garment feel like one of a kind," Carloto says. She showed it in a structured midi dress carefully set with hundreds of beaded flowers arranged by hand, paired to Chanel pearl-and-heart earrings and white pumps.
The dress fit so well, it felt custom. "Every crystal hand-sewn into the piece I wore hugged my frame with love; it’s something you can really feel the moment it slips onto your body," she says. "Since we were in Hangzhou, a city submerged in centuries of history, it felt right to go for a more classic silhouette. I don’t think I’ve ever felt prettier."
Dressing to sit alongside Lupita Nyong'o and Tilda Swinton in the front row, and honor the work of Chanel's artisans, gave Carloto a chance to re-evaluate the connection between her clothing and her art. She usually seeks out beauty in mundane, writing-at-her-desk outfits; the show was an opportunity to experience something more opulent. "On an average day, I tend to wear some version of the same thing; style to me is a byproduct of my own perspective," she says. "But it is nice having moments, like a Chanel show, where playing dress up becomes a little more inspiring."
Taking in the sprawling, waterfront runway struck Carloto as so much more than a photo opportunity or a trip abroad. "About halfway through the show, I had this special moment to myself where everything rang silent," she says. "It was pretty surreal coming to the reality that I was sitting parallel to a historic moment in fashion, paired with a stunning backdrop of the blue hours of China. Nothing will ever compare to the gratitude spilling over me."
Chanel itself might have had exactly the words Carloto was looking for in her reflection on the evening. It wasn't just a runway, according to the show notes, but a "poetic voyage."
