Chanel presents its first fashion show in Africa

The French brand brought its Métiers d'Art show to Dakar.

It could have wrongly go wrong. The optics of Chanel, one of the tallest of all European high luxury brands, parachuted into Africa, a continent where they have no stores or significant business, with a one-of-a-kind fashion show, could have slamming, loud, colonialism.

Especially because it was the first show of its kind ever staged in sub-Saharan Africa, let alone Dakar, Senegal, which was once part of the French empire, now a country with its own fashion culture and thriving heritage, especially since Chanel has no particular individual history with the region ("I can't say that Madame Chanel dreamed of coming to Dakar," said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel).

Especially after fashion's mea culpas of diversity and inclusivity, and recognition of its multiple missteps of cultural appropriation.

The fact that the Chanel Métiers d'Art show, held at the Palais de Justice in Dakar earlier this week, went off with only a touch of Twitter feedback testifies to the effort that the house has made to reframe the exercise.

Rather than just a fashion show designed to entice a new market to spend big bucks, it was designed as a three-day festival following the Dakar fashion week designed to highlight the country's talents in the fields of art, dance, music and literature. Less like an exotic shorthand for new inspiration, in other words, more of a celebration of equals.

In that, it marked a big step forward, though imperfect.

However, by shining the spotlight on a variety of collaborators around the show, including Senegalese rapper Nix, singer Obree Daman and local dance school Ecole des Sables, and situating the ties between them and Chanel somewhere on the abstract plane of the mind, it has also makes the clothes themselves appear as the least of things.

Again: the clothes. They were, according to the show's notes, inspired by "the pop-soul-funk-disco-punk decade" of the 1970s, as opposed to something as obvious as a traditional Senegalese pattern, material or craft technique. (the collection's elaborate craftsmanship, which was designed to showcase the work of many specialist workshops bought by Chanel to preserve their craftsmanship, was entirely made in France). Which meant, it turned out, mostly… pants. Knit, bouclé, flared, denim, often associated with very elaborate jackets, tunics or jackets.

The designer Virginie Viard can make a pretty classic Chanel dress, and she did it here, with crochet lace looks, garden party cocktail dresses and sequined mermaid evening numbers, but they were weighed down by offerings that seemed most suited to a tribe of bourgeois dabbling with the hippie.

If there was an imaginative through line between location and products, it was in the breadth of colors and layering of pieces: a waistcoat beaded on a bouclé jacket; a neat wrap skirt over skinny knit flares; a long, airy tunic over faded jeans, held up by a golden belt. Of the 62 models in the show, 19 were African and 1...