Chanel Takes Hollywood in a Return to Spectacle. Will It Pay Off?

LOS ANGELES—After Tuesday’s Chanel cruise show at Paramount Studios, Dr. Birgit Scheuer Niro bopped to the beat of a live Snoop Dogg show in a pink-tweed midriff-baring suit, her blond hair in a high ponytail. “A real, real, real Beverly Hills housewife,” she said of her look—although in reality, she is a German physician based in Paris and specializing in breast-cancer screening. “It’s a serious profession, and my hobby is fashion,” said Dr. Scheuer Niro, a Chanel client important enough to receive a coveted invitation to the fashion show.

“I always enjoy when I see other clients in the same outfit,” said the doctor, of a nearby client in the same pink Chanel cruise look. “Sometimes we take a photo and say: ‘Look, we are twins today.’”