Virginie Viard, the quiet, creative force behind Chanel's quiet reinvention, may say little, but she always says what she says. As her close friend, model and music producer Caroline de Maigret, describes her conversation as "anything but small talk." She doesn't even know how to fake small talk."

Viard vividly remembers the first time she watched a Chanel show, an invitation from the father of a family friend. It was a haute couture extravagando for Karl Lagerfeld, a late 1980s Camp fan. Hats and gloves are ubiquitous in the collection, with models including Ines de la Fressange and Marpessa Hennink, the murder of countless film photographers.

So what does Viard say about the series? 'Terrible! "It's old," she says matter-of-factly now.

Viard began her career as Karl Lagerfeld's most prized creative studio director at Chanel, famously describing her as "my right hand..." Until Karl died in February 2019 to become the creative director of the brand, this seamless elegant transformation is the result of the brand's legendary high class uniform workshop.

If the fashion world is expecting the secretive and low-key Wertheimer family, who control Chanel, to appoint a heavyweight to succeed Karl Lagerfeld, there are plenty of clues that they will place a high value on lineage, with a particular emphasis on experience and expertise - not least because Lagerfeld himself was present at his last two collections. We joined Viard, who has worked for him since 1987, in closing the curtain.

Under the shadow of Lagerfeld and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, two of the most powerful creators of the 20th and 21st centuries, Viard, 58, is arguably the least-known designer in fashion's most famous family. Compared to the two before her, she is so shy that she almost wants to be invisible. "She's a person of action," says actress and Chanel brand ambassador Kristen Stewart. "She doesn't talk big." Kristen added, "Viard embraces otherness. She's beautiful in her own way."

Viard was born in Lyon, France's historic textile center, the son of two doctors. When her father was transferred to the Municipal Hospital of Dijon, Viard moved with him to the small city of Dijon. As a child, Viard would sometimes dress up as a nurse or doctor and accompany her father to hospitals to cheer on his patients, but she never intended to follow in her parents' footsteps. "I loved seeing doctors, I loved talking to them," she says now, but long ago she decided that "fashion is so much easier!"

Viard's mother taught her how to make needlework, and when she was 20, she started a brand called Nirvana with a friend, making clothes from fabrics made in her grandfather's textile factory. Like the young Gabrielle Chanel, Viard loved jersey knitwear, "because it doesn't require a special cut, the body gives it a silhouette." However, Viard later studied tailoring at a local fashion school. She also worked as a Saturday clerk at a local clothing and jewelry store, although "I never really sold anything." "I was scared of customers! I've been changing shops and window displays - red one week, green the next."

Paris finally beckoned, and through her well-connected roommate in Lyon, Viard secured an internship with Jacqueline de Ribes, the Parisian social queen who had just decided to combine her great taste and fashion talents to create her own brand. Viard recalls: "We were working in her house, all the fabrics were on the bed and the photocopier was in the bathroom. I am the assistant of three, and there are four of us."

Soon after, she began working as an assistant to costume designer Dominique Borg, and was praised for her work on films such as Rodin's Lover by Bruno Nuytten and Les Miserables by Claude Lelouch, before finding her true passion.

At the same time, her family moved to a country house in Burgundy. Their neighbors are members of the staff of Prince Rainier, Prince of Monaco. The neighbor soon met Karl Lagerfeld, then a resident of Monaco and a close friend of Princess Caroline. He boldly asked Carl if he needed an intern. Fortunately, he does. Viard traveled to Rue Cambourn to meet Lagerfeld's personal assistant, Gilles Dufour, who immediately hired her.

"Carl immediately started asking me, 'What do you think? "What do you think of this color? 'I felt very embarrassed, "Viard recalls. She quickly moved from internship to full-time. "Carl clicked with Virginie," says Eric Wright, another member of Lagerfeld's design team. "Virginie was always calm and very low-key, but she was very present, powerful and infectious."

At the time, the team was small: in addition to Dufour and Wright, there was a senior ready-to-wear assistant, an accessories designer and his assistant, and Dufour's enthusiastic and capable niece, Victoire de Castellane, who was in charge of Chanel's most prominent dress and jewelry collection at the time. Viard soon saw an opportunity to apply her training in costume design and her meticulous organizational skills.

"My chance was that no one was doing the embroidery," she says. So she was sent to work with the historic and prestigious Francois Lesage embroidery workshop. "He and Carl were both 'strong personalities,'" Viard recalls. "I must be good at manoeuvre!"

Chanel has some artisan treasure trove of suppliers, and Viard loves working with these exceptional characters. For example, Mr. Desrues, the button-maker, would come every day at twelve o 'clock with his suitcase, which might contain only a single jewel-like button, wrapped in layers of paper, which was his masterpiece of art; Or Madame Pouzieux, who provided unparalleled braided piping for Chanel suits, and whose workshop was located above a stable in a farmhouse deep in the French countryside.

"I received her samples," Viard said, "and they smelled like horses... Fortunately, I love horses." In recent years, Chanel has acquired 38 failing haute artisan or craft workshops, including flower and feather workshops, hat workshops, gloves workshops, ruffles workshops and fabric and footwear design workshops, 11 of which will soon be integrated into 19M, a vast exclusive campus in northern Paris that is scheduled to open next year.

"Virginie loves luxury in clothing, craftsmanship and beauty." "But at the same time, she's incredibly pragmatic."

In 1992, Karl Lagerfeld returned to Chloe, where he had defined the romantic and poetic retro style of the house as early as 1964 until he left to join Chanel in 1982. On his return, he took Viard with him. "Whatever you do, surround yourself with a lot of women," the pragmatic Lagerfeld advised Wright. "Women with different personalities: that way, you inspire each other."

"I like weird things!" She told writer Charla Carter. Her collection of glass snowballs, green plastic frog phones and papier-mache cactus, painted by Stefan Lubrina into red-and-yellow striped wall decorations echoing the work of the Bloomsbury group artists, was taken in by the writer.

"Even when I worked there, I didn't wear Chanel!" At the time, Viard admitted that Sybilla, Helmut Lang, John Galliano and Martin Margiela were her preferred designers. "I like the occasional witty expression," she notes, "but not too deliberately." I guess you could say I like things with style but authenticity." Viard's electric aesthetic, including what she called "flea market moments," was evident in her red Penny velvet pajama pants paired with men's white cotton underwear, and was soon featured in Lagerfeld's Chloe Bohemian collection.

At Chloe, Viard is used to working at night. "Karl arrived very late, sometimes at 11 o 'clock at night, because he was juggling Chanel and Lagerfeld during the day," she recalls. His designs usually unfold to the soundtrack of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the grunge music Viard loved.

"Musically, she's very rock 'n 'roll," de Maigret said. "She's always interested in the side of people that they don't know, the extra stuff." Later, she and Wright would head to Natacha for a late-night snack, a popular restaurant in the fashion world at the time. Viard's circle of show business friends impressed Wright, and her friends often joined them.

Vincent Lindon, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani all trusted her with advice on how to dress and how to dress, "Wright said." All the young actors in French cinema also trusted Virginie."

In the late '90s, Lagerfeld decided to bring Viard back to Chanel. She said: "The only thing I wanted was to stay with Karl because the moment I came back to Chanel was not the best time. I remember a launch, and Carl only wanted to use tech dive fabrics. I tried to get him to love tweed and all that, because... Chanel's technological diving fabric, a brand-new molded handbag? It was terrible! We have to get back to romance!"

"Virginie came back in that moment," Wright says, "because it was so much more pure and fluid." Viard's unique French Bohemian style soon had a subtle influence on Lagerfeld and reshaped the Chanel aesthetic. "She likes to feel casual, relaxed and spontaneous. Virginie brings a fresh breath to Chanel."

These qualities define Virginie's style and approach as a creative director today. "I remember asking Carl once, 'Oh, can't you make a classic little shirt dress just like this? '" recalls Sofia Coppola, who interned at Chanel in the 1980s. "He said, 'No, we never go back. We always move forward. Virginie is passionate about reinterpretation, but she always brings things back to life - that's how she works. Her creation will never look like a copy."

For the launch of Viard's 2020 Haute Couture Workshop series "31 Rue Cambon, Paris", Sofia Coppola, as art director, recreated Chanel's Haute Couture salon and moved its famous mirror ladder to the Grand Palais. In those days, the space was designed so that Gabrielle Chanel could hide at the end of the stairs and spy on the reactions of the audience through the mirror without being detected.

In the early 1990s, Christian Liaigre transformed it into a modern black and grey style at the request of Karl Lagerfeld. It is currently being renovated by renowned decorative designer Jacques Grange, aiming to recreate the original atmosphere of the salon in the 1930s, which reflects Virginie's taste.

Coppola suggested they hold the dinner and party at La Coupole, a legendary 1920s restaurant. As young Belgian singer Angele sang and legendary French crooner Christophe surprised the crowd with an impromptu performance, the night seemed like a glimpse into Viard's inner rock world. Christophe contracted the virus earlier this year, and Viard opened his spring 2021 collection with one of his songs.