We are an hour away from Chanel’s restaging of its cruise 2025 show at Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI), and the sprawling neo-modernist campus is already filled with tweed-attired guests who are taking in all the sights that Chanel has laid before them. And Chanel has certainly given them plenty to take in. As president of fashion at Chanel, Bruno Pavlovsky, tells me in our Singapore-exclusive interview, it took “more or less a year” for the House to work on all the components needed for its orchestration.
“We made the decision to show in Hong Kong quite a long time ago; this was something that was prepared together with the cruise collection in Marseille,” he says. “But this is more than a replica [of the Marseille show]. It was something that we wanted to do to create a strong impact. That is why we decided to focus on creation and transmission with HKDI and use the opportunity to launch our partnership with the Institute.”
In the HKDI Gallery on the ground floor is the Chanel-supported “Imagine an Elsewhere” exhibition, with 16 collective works by 35 of the Institute’s students from various artistic disciplines. Also greeting guests upon their arrival is Modern Flirt, a short film by French director and close friend of the House Audrey Diwan that stars Hong Kong actress Angela Yuen and French actor Benjamin Voisin. Specially commissioned for the occasion, the film—projected on a vast wall flanking the entrance—sets the tone for the evening with footage that captures the distinct vitality and energy of Hong Kong’s nightscape.
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As I walk further in, I discover the real reason why a majority of Chanel’s guests are clustered together with their phones in hand and fingers at the ready. Seated in a cordoned-off area in the midst of the Institute’s four steel-and-glass towers are Chanel ambassadors Caroline de Maigret, Penélope Cruz and Whitney Peak, along with Hong Kong celebrities Chow Yun-Fat, Fala Chen, Chung Suet-Ying and Huang Yao, to name a few. The stars don’t seem to mind being the subject of intense gawking. They’re deeply engrossed in a cross-cultural conversation about creation and transmission for Radio Chanel, a special programme broadcast that mirrors the one transmitted at the House’s cruise 2025 in Marseille in May.
There's good reason why Chanel has pulled out all the stops for its highly anticipated event. (It was reported that four individuals were arrested for selling fake tickets to the fashion presentation; 13 people fell victim.) Chanel’s three-year partnership with HKDI marks the first time that the House has collaborated with an Asian university—and it’s the latest in a list of university alliances that includes Politecnico di Milano and Cambridge. But while the former two partnerships focused on sustainability, Chanel’s partnership with HKDI centres around the development of crucial skills in design and savoir-faire, and the facilitation of “access to the fashion ecosystem”.
To that end, Chanel invited five lucky HKDI students to France in May to witness the Marseille presentation, as well as to immerse themselves in other Chanel-centric activities in Paris—the influences of that significant journey were then channelled into the artworks found in the “Imagine an Elsewhere” exhibition. Chanel’s insistence on an authentic relationship also saw students from various universities across Hong Kong attending the Chanel Talk that was organised earlier that day. Attended by more than 680 guests (550 of whom were students), the talk presented several notable personalities—Pavlovsky, Cruz, Diwan, Yuen, Margaret Zhang and multidisciplinary Willo Perron—who spoke on subjects ranging from the city’s creative scene to the importance of supporting emerging talent.
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“As a brand, we are nourished by this new generation. We feel that it's also a way to regenerate, if I may say, the brand's energy,” Pavlovsky explains in our conversation. “We are not asking them to design collections; that's not the objective. But we do want them to give us a sense of what keeps them awake at night. It can be around design, it can be around new materials, it can be around many different areas. And I believe that to stay at the top, we have to be connected more than ever with this new generation. So it's quite interesting to do more and more of these kinds of initiatives. It’s also good for our people because they feel more challenged.”
Another field that Chanel champions is the world of cinema, which explains the House’s latest partnership with Diwan on Modern Flirt and the Cinema Talk: Hong Kong Frames, a panel discussion that was held the day before. Delving into the city’s rich, illustrious heritage for films, the conversation brought together once again Diwan and Yuen, along with production designer and film editor William Chang Suk-Ping, and director and screenwriter Norris Wong. Critic and journalist Clarence Tsui moderated the panel which was held within a theatre on the 92,900sqm grounds of Shaw Studios.
As Pavlovsky tells me, Chanel is heavily involved in “many different cinema initiatives around the world” because it presents another way to “talk about creation”. He lists several countries in which the brand has been active in pursuing these collaborations, not least Singapore, where Chanel worked with Eric Khoo to bring to life his fantasy drama Spirit World starring Catherine Deneuve (released on 30 November 2024).
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Conscious of the time I have left with him, I broach the topic that has been weighing on everyone’s minds: Who is going to be Chanel’s new creative director? The circumstances, after all, couldn’t be more apt. In a few minutes, we’ll be making our way to the upper levels of HKDI to enjoy Virginie Viard’s last collection for the House, inspired by coastal living and seafaring adventures with nautical-sport elements in the form of diving hoods, swimwear and shining rubber ballet flats in an aquatic colour palette.
“I will not talk about it too much because we will communicate a lot about it when we are ready. But for sure, it is not who the press is writing about,” he readily answers. “There have been a lot of names [being thrown about] and everyone is free to give their opinion. But it is a bit different when you are on the outside looking in than when you are on the inside and know our challenges and that we want to continue to have 10 collections a year. There is a big, talented team here, and we want this team to continue expressing their talent for the future, so the famous one has to be ready to work with what Chanel is today. Chanel is Chanel because of its incredible heritage; we want to continue to protect and project that in a modern way.”
The stars came out to play that special night. Stroll through the gallery below to see who was there (and what they wore).
