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Chanel opened its doors this week for a private screening of Coutures, the new drama from French filmmaker Alice Winocour starring Angelina Jolie. The event took place inside the house’s historic Rue Cambon headquarters, a location that plays a central part in the film and one that has rarely been accessible to a narrative production.
The story follows three women whose paths cross during a tense and fast moving Paris Fashion Week. Jolie plays Maxine, an American director who is trying to keep a film on track while facing a difficult divorce and a diagnosis of breast cancer. Her work on set brings her closer to a colleague played by Louis Garrel. The film also introduces Ada, played by Anyier Anei, who arrives from South Sudan to walk her first runway, and Angèle, played by Ella Rumpf, a makeup artist working behind the scenes. Their
experiences unfold in parallel and show how emotional strain and professional pressure mix in an environment that looks glamorous from the outside but is demanding up close.
Coutures marks the first time Chanel has allowed a fiction film to shoot inside its tailoring workshops, couture salons, and the well known staircase at Rue Cambon. These spaces have been shown in documentaries but never opened for a narrative feature. Clément Geray, who leads cinema related projects at Chanel, explained that the house worked with Winocour more than a year before filming began. She met with many of the artisans who were present at the screening and learned about their daily work so she could portray their world as accurately as possible. This close access shaped the tone of the film and gave Winocour a setting that feels lived in rather than staged.
The screening was part of Chanel’s Cinema Rendez Vous series. Elsa Heizmann, the global director of cinematic relations, opened the evening by sharing how closely the house has supported the project from the start. She noted that the film will not be released until February twenty twenty six and called the early screening a gift from the production and distribution teams. The film was produced by CG Cinema and Closer and will be released in France by Pathé.
Chanel also worked with Pascaline Chavanne, a multiple César winning costume designer, to create silhouettes inspired by the house’s collections for one of the final scenes. The collaboration allowed the couture teams to take part in the film in a direct and practical way.
After the screening, Winocour spoke alongside Marillier and Anei. For Anei, the experience carried extra meaning as she made her acting debut in the film and had her first real runway appearance last year during the Fall Winter show.
The evening closed with Heizmann mentioning that this was the second to last Cinema Rendez Vous event of the year. She also teased next week’s presentation of Arco, an animated feature directed by Ugo Bienvenu and produced by Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas.
