For fashion lovers everywhere, Gabrielle Chanel is Paris personified, but her love of Venice also ran deep. La Serenissima was where, in her thirties, the couturière took a prolonged sabbatical as she mourned the love of her life, Boy Capel. The inspirations she gleaned from the city’s labyrinthine layout and its hallmarks —gondolier stripes, the emblematic lion, Byzantine mosaics, and Pala d’Oro, the jeweled altarpiece at Saint Mark’s Basilica—inform the Chanel allure to this day.
But she also embraced Venice for its social swirl. A favorite among high society, artists, actors, and other creatives, Harry’s Bar—a diminutive watering hole with an outsized reputation—has been a scene for nearly a century now, but never more so than during the Venice International Film Festival.
On Monday night, an intimate yet boisterous dinner hosted by Chanel at that celebrated haunt drew a constellation of stars, from icons like Tilda Swinton, Penelope Cruz, and Anna Mouglalis to a new generation of rising talents, including Sadie Sink, Italian actress Fotinì Peluso and the Swiss artist, author, and actress Kayije Kagame, one of the breakout stars of this year’s edition.
“My heart is beating so fast I can hardly get the words out,” said Kagame, who rose that morning at 4 am for a series of firsts—a first trip to Venice, first film festival, and the première of her first feature, Saint-Omer by director Alice Diop, which is in competition for the Golden Lion. “Here I am, and the magic is taking hold even beyond that,” she marveled as she recounted meeting a fellow guest, the writer, and director Rahmatou Keita, who knew her mother back in Nigeria.
Sink summed up her whirlwind visit in two words: “pretty surreal.” “It’s like stepping into a storybook illustration. There’s something magic in the air, so Venice and Chanel complement each other nicely that way.” The Stranger Things actress, who’s in town for the première of The Whale by Darren Aronofsky, said she was having fun “punking up” her looks, tonight accessorizing her cotton tweed dress from the Spring-Summer 2023 pre-collection with a trio of Coco Crush ear cuffs. “I keep checking my ears,” she said. “It’s precious cargo.”
At just 23, Peluso already is no stranger to the festival, but she confessed to being starstruck at her first Chanel dinner in Venice.
