My chute holder is a Kevlar-reinforced 24mm cardboard airframe tube that's attached to my av-bay. The rocket airframe has a 38mm coupler glued into the end of it, and the nosecone slides over the coupler. The av-bay is mounted inside the coupler and the chute holder sticks out past the end of the coupler and deep into the nosecone.
The harness for the chute has a piston and an endcap for the chute holder.
My apogee charge is located at the front end of the chute holder at the end of a wire from the av-bay, and the main deployment charge is at the bottom of the chute holder behind the piston. The shock cord for the nosecone is folded accordion-style and taped around the chute holder. At apogee, the charge at the front of the chute holder blows the nosecone off of the rest of the airframe, and the chute holder endcap protects the chute. The shock cord for the nosecone is attached exterior to the chute holder, at its base, so that it's out of the way when the main chute charge blows at low altitude. The rocket descends nosecone-first, with the nosecone harness stretched out. That harness is long enough that the chute won't get mixed up with the nosecone if it's fully deployed.