Virginie Viard Breaks Silence on Chanel Exit in Revealing New Book

PARIS — Two years after being fired from Chanel, Virginie Viard is telling her side of the story in a new book that lifts the lid on the inner workings of the famously secretive fashion house.

The discreet designer, who avoided the spotlight during her five-year tenure, appeared on the French talk show “Quotidien” on Friday night to promote “Un Regard: Une Vie Chez Chanel,” which loosely translates to “My Life at Chanel,” released by French publisher Stock to coincide with Paris Fashion Week.

In it, she details how she was dismissed after 37 years at the house and described her career and close relationship with her former boss Karl Lagerfeld, to whom she addresses a bittersweet posthumous letter.

She also details how she grew closer with Hedi Slimane, the man long rumored as her potential successor at Chanel, in the wake of her departure.

Viard said she was told over lunch with Alain Wertheimer, global executive chairman of Chanel, that she was being let go. Viard said the billionaire, who owns the brand with his brother Gérard, simply said: “We’re going to end it here.”

The designer had felt the atmosphere shift after her disastrous outdoor cruise collection in Marseille in May 2024, which was marred by a mini-storm. But the sudden announcement left her tongue-tied.

“I understand the words. I don’t understand what they mean. It’s June. Preparations for haute couture are in full swing. Sales have never been better. Everything is going well. Why now? Why this way? My voice catches somewhere between my throat and my heart. There is no discussion to be had. No explanation. Just this sudden announcement — and my stunned silence,” she wrote.

Chanel had just reported revenues of $19.7 billion for 2023 as a whole, up 16 percent at comparable rates. The company had underscored that under Viard’s watch, Chanel’s ready-to-wear business had multiplied by 2.5, and that it grew 23 percent that year alone.

But online reaction to the collections was increasingly negative, with open speculation about Viard’s ouster putting Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, on the back foot.

“I could tell there was something in the air — something really unpleasant — but I still wasn’t expecting this. I knew it would end one day, but perhaps not that day, and not like that,” Viard told host Yann Barthès on the TMC channel program Friday.

In the book, she describes how some of her teams threatened to go on strike in protest. But after she left, the company swiftly moved on without her, with the fall 2024 haute couture collection, presented three weeks later, credited to the studio team. Meanwhile, Viard was struggling to find her feet.

“Chanel was not a job: It was my backbone, the framework of my existence. And when that framework is taken away — not gradually, not with transitional crutches, but all at once, with a few words spoken in a light-filled dining room — you’re no longer able to stand,” she writes. “I struggle to walk down the street. I’m afraid.”

During the soul-searching that followed, she realized she did not take up the space left by Lagerfeld after his death in 2019. Viard rarely gave interviews, partly because she doesn’t sketch, instead sharing inspiration collages with her teams.

“This method is not what people imagine when they picture a creative director. It’s less spectacular, less easy to talk about, and that incommunicability — that inability to show, explain or own a method that works instinctively — contributed to my vulnerability. When you can’t explain what you do, others define it for you,” she said.

She also lamented that she didn’t have a deputy, having herself assisted Lagerfeld, who famously described Viard as “my right arm and my left arm.”

“I probably should have found myself a working partner, someone to bounce ideas off, to play the game I didn’t want to play — not in my place, but alongside me. Someone to defend me, to act as a go-between — to be the public face of those things, in me, that wanted to remain invisible,” she said.

The 64-year-old suggests she was held to a different standard than her male counterparts.

“I don’t claim to know this for sure, but it’s a theory I can’t rule out either. I know that a professional man’s discretion is read as rigor, concentration and conscientiousness. A professional woman’s discretion is read as withdrawal, lack of presence, fragility,” she said.

Viard said that in September 2024, she reconnected with Slimane through mutual friends Princess Caroline of Hanover and her daughter Alexandra.

“Our conversations are effortless, smooth, intense. There’s an immediate kinship — not friendship yet, but the stage just before. We’re two people who’ve inhabited the same spheres, endured the same kind of pressure, who understand each other instinctively, and who enjoy talking about Karl,” she recalled.

“He explains to me power dynamics I recognized without ever having named them,” she continued. “It’s not that I couldn’t play the game, but the game made me anxious. It blocked my creativity and robbed me of my freedom, and without freedom, I lose my true essence. I don’t regret that conviction, but I know it came at a cost.”

She also describes her last few months working with Lagerfeld, noting he always remained vague about his illness. She was informed by Pavlovsky at the hospital on the day of Lagerfeld’s death that she’d been chosen as his successor.

“I wondered if Karl had suggested my appointment. I didn’t know exactly what they had discussed. I might never know. If it had come from him, then it was the most beautiful gift he could have left me. If he wanted me, it meant he recognized my place,” she said. “But I knew him. If he wanted me, it was also because he wanted no one else to succeed him.”

In her letter addressed to Lagerfeld, she oscillates between gratitude and resentment, revealing she once considered an offer to join Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton because she was tired of Amanda Harlech, Lagerfeld’s muse, swooping in before shows and occupying her place by the designer’s side.

“It was very hard for me. There was something deliberately hurtful about this setup and you knew it. You knew exactly what you were doing,” she writes, accusing Lagerfeld of thriving on stoking rivalries in his team.

Viard said she decided to stay because the duo she formed with Lagerfeld was irreplaceable. “We really were a fantastic team, a terrific creative duo, with all that implies of intensity, mutual exasperation, mutual admiration and codependency,” she said.

When she heard that Matthieu Blazy was poised to succeed her at the helm of Chanel, she said she felt relief.

“It will be something completely different: a fresh perspective, a different hand, an approach that is neither mine nor Karl’s. Not a continuation, but a clean break — and clean breaks at least have the merit of clarity,” she said. “Chanel will be different with him, and that sets me free.”

As Blazy prepared to make his debut in October last year, Viard came across a press article that described the company’s three main acts: founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Lagerfeld and Blazy.

“It doesn’t even namecheck me. I’m the space between two acts. The interval. I pause over the word. I read it again. The interval: the moment when the audience gets up, goes to the restroom, orders a drink, chats in the corridor. The moment when nothing really happens,” she writes.

Viard concludes by explaining that she wrote the book because she stands by her work and wants it to be remembered for posterity.

“Karl invented it all — a wonderful story that will remain forever. And Coco Chanel will always be the inspiration. And I — my collections, my shows, my collaborations, my sleepless nights at the studio — will last forever too, even if no one is saying it yet,” she said.

Viard told “Quotidien” she’s finally ready to go back to work, though she doesn’t plan to launch her own line. But above all, she can move on.

“Finally, now, I am super happy,” she said.