Chanel    Fashion

Paris Couture Week: Chanel

First, I’d like to say that I’m so incredibly happy that Chanel Haute Couture chose to do something more interesting for their show this season than they did for their show last season. Although, if you find silver and white boring, this may be another loser for you.

It was a winner for me, however. For the first time in his lengthy career, Karl Lagerfeld created a collection that completely eschewed black and navy – in fact, it eschewed color of any sort, save for a few traditional Chanel suits with a culotte twist (I just dry heaved a little bit there), which were rendered in various pastels. The collection was beautifully draped, beaded and rendered in the most unforgiving color palette you can imagine for the construction of clothing, but it all worked exactly as it should have. Of course it did; it’s couture.

Lagerfeld has said that the collection came to him in a 5 a.m. dream-like flash, and he referred to it as “neon rococo.” It wasn’t exactly neon, but it did have a great deal of glitzy intricacy, which more or less fulfills the “rococo” part of that proclamation. While the beading motifs may have reflected an old-world sensibility and craftsmanship, some of the elements – foiled stripes on a white dress, the high-gloss silver booties that every model wore, Baptiste Giabiconi’s metallic suit as he escorted the traditional end-of-collection couture bride – were at least a bit reminiscent of the most fashionable sci-fi movie you’ve never seen. If the people that made those movies dressed their actors in Chanel couture, I might reconsider my hatred of the genre.

                        

Photos via Fashionologie.com

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