The Chanel runway show in Paris was interrupted by an unexpected guest: Marie Benoliel, better known as Marie S’Infiltre, a French comedian and Youtuber known for her stunts, like interrupting and infiltrating just about any event she can. During today’s Chanel presentation, she ended up getting escorted off the stage by none other than Gigi Hadid, who put her catwalk on pause in order to ensure that Marie could not keep awkwardly posing and traipsing around the runway.
For some people in the audience, the interruption served as funny disruption — The New York Times style editor called the moment the “best Chanel finale video ever” and other attendees seemed to be floored by the sight of a supermodel turning into a very firm security guard.
The moment has since gone viral, with others sharing their own videos of the catwalk crasher. According to some, the security guards had a hard time spotting her because her outfit almost blended in with the Spring Summer collection –– almost because her shoes were decidedly not couture, and the fit of her houndstooth dress suit did not look tailored.
In an Instagram post about the incident, Benoliel described how she even got into the Chanel show which, unlike her other stunts, required multiple rounds of deception. She joked that backstage, her and Gigi Hadid both got into a knockdown drag-out fight, and gossiped about their love lives. It's likely that neither of those things happened, but Hadid has yet to release a comment about the incident. On her Instagram story, she shared videos of her own walk down the Chanel runway, along with Kaia Gerber and plenty of other high profile models, but she didn’t include any footage of her escorting Benoliel off of the stage.
Beyond the publicity she’d get from pulling off a stunt like this, it is unclear what other motivations Benoliel may have had. She recently crashed another fashion show, one for Etam Lingerie, which also took place in Paris. Benoliel currently has a one-woman comedy show at the Comédie des Champs Elysées Theatre in Paris, and in the notes of both her Youtube videos, there is a link to buy tickets for about $31.
For a video of a Youtube influencer crashing the stage to become the most viral part of a Chanel runway meant to honor the late Karl Lagerfeld during Paris Fashion Week is just another sign that fashion shows themselves have become a pretty boring spectacle. Between this Chanel show and the Gucci show in Milan, it seems that the only way for runways can make the news are when there’s a disruption of the show, whether it's from a model protesting the use of straitjackets as fashion, or a scheming comedian looking to bump sales to her comedy show.
