PARIS — Paris promised to kick off the 2024 Olympic Video games with the best present on earth. Mom Nature rained on the French capital’s parade, however Friday’s opening ceremony was nonetheless a feast of homegrown trend.

With LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton on board as a premium associate, its Dior, Louis Vuitton and Berluti manufacturers all performed a task within the three-and-a-half hour present that unfurled on the Seine, marking the primary time the opening ceremony has not taken place in a stadium.

Extra unexpectedly, the occasion additionally shone a highlight on a plethora of unbiased Paris-based designers, with Jeanne Friot, Charles de Vilmorin, Victor Weinsanto, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Kevin Germanier and others featured at totally different factors in the course of the story that unfolded in entrance of landmarks together with the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral.

Their presence mirrored organizers’ ambitions to make the present open, inclusive and environmentally aware.

Whereas the pouring rain didn’t ship the hoped-for “golden hour” impact, there was loads to dazzle the greater than 300,000 individuals who gathered on the banks of the river, and the estimated 1.5 billion individuals who tuned in worldwide. 

Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of womenswear at Dior, dressed performers together with Girl Gaga and Celine Dion, marking the latter’s triumphant comeback.

Dion appeared in a grand finale on the primary flooring of the Eiffel Tower, performing Édith Piaf’s basic “Hymne à l’amour” sporting a fringed white silk georgette robe studded with 1000’s of silver beads that required greater than 1,000 hours of labor. 

The Canadian celebrity was final seen onstage in 2019 earlier than asserting she was affected by stiff particular person syndrome, a uncommon illness that causes muscle spasms. 

Shortly after the 7:30 p.m. begin time, Gaga kicked issues off with a tribute to Zizi Jeanmaire. 

The singer donned a black feather jacket and black satin bustier and panties, topped with a removable skirt embroidered with pink and black feathers, to carry out the French cabaret performer’s best-known tune, “Mon truc en plumes,” alongside 10 dancers on the banks of the river. (Dior clarified in an announcement that the feathers have been collected in the course of the birds’ molt.)

Dior additionally dressed French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura, whose rumored presence had triggered a heated debate round race and nationwide illustration. A Lancôme model ambassador, she is probably the most listened-to French artist on the planet.

Wearing a brief, uneven costume lined in gold-colored feathers that echoed a glance from Chiuri’s fall high fashion assortment, Nakamura carried out her hit tune “Djadja” on the Pont des Arts surrounded by the army band of the French Republican Guard. She ended with a salute, in what might be learn as a pointed message to her detractors. 

One other spotlight was Axelle Saint-Cirel, a mezzo-soprano from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, singing the French nationwide anthem on the roof of the Grand Palais sporting a draped Dior costume that merged with the French flag she was holding.

She was accompanied by a choir of ladies on the Pont Alexandre III wearing up to date variations of the peplos, the gown historically worn by ladies in historical Greece, rendered in pink, white and blue. 

A few of them held flags revisiting the work “Freedom Lady Now” by African American artist Religion Ringgold, who died in April on the age of 93 earlier than she may see the collaboration come to fruition.

It was a part of a tableau dubbed “Sororité” — the phrase changing the normal “Fraternité” of France’s nationwide motto “‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” — that paid tribute to ladies who’ve made a significant contribution to French historical past, together with Simone Veil, who as well being minister promoted the legislation legalizing abortion in France in 1975. 

Chiuri additionally had a hand in one other emotional excessive level: Juliette Armanet’s rendition of “Think about,” accompanied by pianist Sofiane Pamart. The French singer wore a waxed canvas high and flared pants embroidered with light-up embroideries, in a collaboration between Dior and Clara Daguin, a designer recognized for high-tech creations incorporating LEDs and fiber optics.

After her efficiency, a message on the display learn: “We stand and name for peace.”

Earlier within the day, Pharrell Williams, creative director of menswear at Vuitton, joined the ranks of Olympic torchbearers in a relay with Laetitia Casta, the French mannequin who served because the template for the bust of Marianne, the image of the French Republic, that’s displayed in authorities buildings throughout France.

Standing in entrance of the Basilica of Saint-Denis subsequent to a Vuitton trunk created to accommodate the Olympic torch, the duo symbolized the handover between France and Los Angeles, which is ready to host the Summer season Video games in 2028. 

Billed as the most important TV present ever produced, the opening ceremony concerned 18,000 folks, from athletes to performers to technicians, in accordance with Thomas Jolly, creative director of the ceremony.

France’s reply to Lin-Manuel Miranda, he’s recognized for staging marathon Shakespeare productions and lately spearheaded the revival of the Seventies French rock opera “Starmania,” with costumes by Louis Vuitton inventive director of womenswear Nicolas Ghesquière. 

On Friday night time, Vuitton was entrance and heart once more in a pre-filmed scene worthy of a blockbuster film or online game “Murderer’s Creed,” as a masked torchbearer made his method throughout the rooftop of the French trend home’s headquarters overlooking the Seine to enter a workshop the place craftspeople have been making trunks — a little bit of poetic license, because the constructing primarily homes workplaces and showrooms.

It was probably the most seen signal of LVMH’s a number of activations world wide’s largest sporting occasion. 

As a part of the scene dubbed “Synchronicity,” a number of oversize Vuitton trunks have been wheeled throughout the Pont Neuf — the place Williams staged his debut present final June — to the Paris Mint, the place the Olympic medals designed by LVMH-owned jeweler Chaumet have been made.

One other prerecorded sequence confirmed dancers wearing upcyled garments sprayed in gold paint, suspended from scaffolding round Notre-Dame, which is because of reopen in December after 5 years of renovations following a devastating hearth. 

Shortly afterward, ballet dancer Guillaume Diop carried out reside on the roof of Metropolis Corridor wearing a beige Vuitton vest and ample brown pleated shorts. Diop final yr grew to become the primary Black dancer to be named an “étoile,” or star dancer, of the Paris Opera Ballet.

Franco-Algerian rapper Rim’Ok, member of the group 113, carried out in a pink and black shearling shirt in an oversize model of the model’s signature Damier checkerboard sample. 

In the meantime, Shaheem Sanchez, a deaf dancer who pioneered American Signal Language dancing, carried out to the tune “Supernature” by French disco legend Cerrone wearing a copper-colored Vuitton swimsuit.

Daphné Bürki, the styling and costumes director of the ceremony who oversaw the creation of three,000 particular person costumes and commented the ceremony reside on France 2 tv, solely talked about the title of Dior as soon as, though she cited lots of the smaller designers that participated within the night’s 12 creative tableaux.

De Vilmorin designed the costumes for a sequence devoted to like that featured a throuple, in a tribute to the French New Wave basic “Jules et Jim.” 

Dancers on poles wore rainbow-colored skirts that includes his fantastical designs, in a scene that concluded with the pilots of the Patrouille de France tracing a pink coronary heart within the sky above the Pont des Arts.

Friot, whose designs have been worn by the likes of Madonna and Eurovision winners Måneskin, dressed a cowled rider on a grey horse, harking back to Joan of Arc, who introduced the Olympic flag to its last vacation spot reverse the Eiffel Tower.

Others have been featured in a trend present staged on the Passerelle Debilly, the place Kenzo held a runway show final yr. 

Farida Khelfa, a muse to designers starting from Azzedine Alaïa to Jean Paul Gaultier, walked in an outfit by Maitrepierre, whereas Germanier dressed Paralympic fencer Beatrice “Bebe” Vio Grandis. Weinsanto put his muse Ildjima Masrangar in an enormous organza coif in a tribute to his native Alsace.

Virtually 100 boats carrying the vast majority of the ten,500 athletes competing within the Video games traveled alongside the Seine from the Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadero — the esplanade throughout from the Eiffel Tower.

The French boat was the final in. The athletes have been wearing official uniforms by Berluti, although many had slipped on disposable plastic rain ponchos, considerably diluting the affect of the design. Luckily, they’re as a consequence of don the outfits once more for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Video games on Aug. 28.

Jolly stated he wished the ceremony to indicate that France is “very flamboyant, extraordinarily numerous and intensely wealthy” — a robust political assertion at a time when the nation’s authorities is in limbo, following snap elections that resulted in a hung parliament. 

“Paris and the Olympic Video games on the whole are all about folks coming collectively,” he stated.