All the fashion at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

PARIS — Paris had promised to open the 2024 Olympics with the world’s greatest spectacle. Nature marred the French capital’s runway show, but Friday’s opening ceremony was a veritable feast of local fashion.

With LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton as its premium partner, its Dior, Louis Vuitton and Berluti brands all played a role in the three-and-a-half-hour spectacle that took place on the Seine, marking the first time the opening ceremony was not held in a stadium.

More unexpectedly, the event also highlighted a plethora of independent Paris-based creators, with Jeanne Friot, Charles de Vilmorin, Victor Weinsanto, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Kevin Germanier and others featured at different points in history that unfolded in front of landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Their presence reflected the organisers’ ambition to make the show open, inclusive and environmentally friendly.

Although the pouring rain did not produce the “golden hour” effect that was hoped for, there was enough to dazzle the more than 300,000 people gathered on the banks of the river and the approximately 1.5 billion people who followed the event around the world.

Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of womenswear at Dior, has dressed artists including Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, marking the latter’s triumphant return.

Dion appeared in a grand finale on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, performing Edith Piaf’s classic “Hymne à l’amour” wearing a fringed white silk georgette dress studded with thousands of silver beads that took more than 1,000 hours to complete.

The Canadian superstar was last seen on stage in 2019 before announcing she was suffering from stiff person syndrome, a rare condition that causes muscle spasms.

Shortly after the concert began at 7:30 p.m., Gaga kicked things off with a tribute to Zizi Jeanmaire.

The singer donned a black feather jacket, black satin bustier and culottes, topped with a detachable skirt embroidered with pink and black feathers, to perform the French cabaret artist’s best-known song, “Mon truc en plumes,” alongside 10 dancers on the banks of the river. (Dior said in a statement that the feathers were collected when the birds were moulting.)

Dior also dressed French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura, whose presence sparked a heated debate about race and national representation. An ambassador for the Lancôme brand, she is the most listened to French artist in the world.

Wearing a short, asymmetrical dress covered in gold feathers reminiscent of a look from Chiuri’s fall haute couture collection, Nakamura performed her hit “Djadja” on the Pont des Arts surrounded by the military band of the French Republican Guard. She ended with a salute, in what could be interpreted as a sharp message to her critics.

Another highlight was Axelle Saint-Cirel, a mezzo-soprano from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, singing the French national anthem on the roof of the Grand Palais, wearing a draped Dior dress that merged with the French flag she was holding.

She was accompanied by a chorus of women on the Ponte Alexandre III, dressed in updated versions of the peplos, the dress traditionally worn by women in ancient Greece, rendered in red, white and blue.

Some of them waved flags revisiting the work “Freedom Woman Now” by African-American artist Faith Ringgold, who died in April at the age of 93 before seeing the collaboration come to fruition.

She was part of a tableau called “Sorority” — the word replacing the traditional “Fraternity” in France’s national motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” — that paid tribute to women who have made major contributions to French history, including Simone Veil, who as health minister pushed through the law legalizing abortion in France in 1975.

Chiuri also participated in another highlight of the evening: Juliette Armanet’s cover of “Imagine,” accompanied by pianist Sofiane Pamart. The French singer wore a waxed canvas top and flared pants embroidered with luminous embroidery, part of a collaboration between Dior and Clara Daguin, a designer known for her high-tech creations incorporating LEDs and fiber optics.

After his performance, a message appeared on the screen: “We stand and call for peace.”

Earlier in the day, Pharrell Williams, artistic director of menswear at Vuitton, joined the ranks of Olympic torchbearers in a relay with Laetitia Casta, the French model who served as the model for the bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic, which is displayed in government buildings across France.

Standing in front of the Saint-Denis Basilica next to a Vuitton trunk created to house the Olympic torch, the duo symbolized the transfer of power between France and Los Angeles, which will host the Summer Games in 2028.

Billed as the largest television spectacle ever produced, the opening ceremony brought together 18,000 people, from athletes to artists to technicians, according to Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the ceremony.

France’s answer to Lin-Manuel Miranda, he is known for staging marathon productions of Shakespeare and recently spearheaded the revival of the 1970s French rock opera “Starmania,” with costumes by Louis Vuitton womenswear artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière.

On Friday night, Vuitton was once again at the center of a pre-filmed scene worthy of a blockbuster movie or an “Assassin’s Creed” video game, as a masked torchbearer strode across the roof of the French fashion house’s headquarters overlooking the Seine River to enter a workshop where artisans were making trunks — a poetic license, since the building is primarily offices and showrooms.

It was the most visible sign of LVMH’s multiple activations around the world’s biggest sporting event.

As part of the scene dubbed “Synchronicity,” several oversized Vuitton trunks were carried across the Pont Neuf — where Williams staged her first show last June — to the Monnaie de Paris, where the Olympic medals designed by LVMH-owned jeweler Chaumet were made.

Another pre-recorded sequence showed dancers dressed in recycled clothing painted with gold paint hanging from scaffolding around Notre Dame, which is due to reopen in December after five years of renovations following a devastating fire.

Shortly after, dancer Guillaume Diop performed live on the roof of the Hôtel de Ville, wearing a beige Vuitton vest and baggy brown pleated shorts. Diop last year became the first black dancer to be named “étoile” of the Paris Opera Ballet.

French-Algerian rapper Rim’K, a member of the group 113, performed in a red and black shearling shirt in an oversized version of the brand’s signature Damier checkerboard pattern.

Meanwhile, Shaheem Sanchez, a deaf dancer who pioneered American Sign Language dance, performed French disco legend Cerrone’s song “Supernature” while wearing a copper-colored Vuitton suit.

Daphné Bürki, the ceremony’s director of styling and costumes, who oversaw the creation of 3,000 individual costumes and provided live commentary on the ceremony on France 2, mentioned Dior’s name only once, although she cited many smaller designers who participated in the evening’s 12 artistic tableaux.

De Vilmorin designed the costumes for a sequence devoted to love featuring a trio, in homage to the French New Wave classic “Jules et Jim”.

Pole dancers wore rainbow-coloured skirts with its fantastical patterns, in a scene that ended with the pilots of the Patrouille de France tracing a red heart in the sky above the Pont des Arts.

Friot, whose designs have been worn by artists including Madonna and Eurovision winner Måneskin, dressed a hooded rider on a gray horse, reminiscent of Joan of Arc, who carried the Olympic flag to its final destination in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Others took part in a fashion show held on the Debilly catwalk, where Kenzo held a show last year.

Farida Khelfa, muse to designers such as Azzedine Alaïa and Jean Paul Gaultier, walked the runway in a Maitrepierre outfit, while Germanier dressed Paralympic fencer Beatrice “Bebe” Vio Grandis. Weinsanto dressed his muse Ildjima Masrangar in a giant organza headdress, in homage to her native Alsace.

Nearly 100 boats carrying the majority of the 10,500 athletes competing at the Games sailed on the Seine from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Trocadéro, the esplanade facing the Eiffel Tower.

The French boat was the last to enter. The athletes were dressed in official Berluti uniforms, although many donned disposable plastic rain ponchos, which somewhat diluted the impact of the design. Fortunately, they are due to don these outfits again for the Paralympic Games opening ceremony on August 28.

Jolly said he wanted the ceremony to show that France is “very flamboyant, extremely diverse and extremely rich” – a strong political statement at a time when the country’s government is in limbo, after early elections resulted in a parliament without an absolute majority.

“Paris and the Olympic Games in general are first and foremost about bringing people together,” he said.