“Not a Versailles garden, but, rather, a modern garden done as landscape art,” pointed out Karl Lagerfeld backstage moments before the start of his Chanel spring show. Regardless of the wordage, the results were the same: pure magic. Some 2,800 guests filled the Grand Palais to partake in Karl’s black-and-white garden complete with three working fountains, 90 models, a 1,148-foot-long runway and an 80-piece French Philharmonic Orchestra. If the setting was amazingly grand and over the top, the clothes were just the exact opposite, whispering breathtaking elegance and versatility of age that was reinforced by Freja, today’s model of the moment, sharing the catwalk with nineties supermodel Stella Tennant and, remarkably, 53-year-old Inès de la Fressange, the original Coco model who hadn’t walked a Chanel runway in over two decades until yesterday morning.
But I digress. How were the clothes? Anyone who’s seen the Resnais film “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) will immediately recognize the source for Karl’s collection of pale colors and filmy black dresses that models wafted about on a white pebbled ground and black terraces. As the orchestra played The Verve’s 1997 hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” a shimmering haze of metallics, ostrich feathers and gilded jewelry came swanning out. “After fake fur, I thought that feathers was the thing to do,” said Lagerfeld, in obvious reference to this season’s walk on Antarctica. Though many pieces looked heavy, they were, in fact, as light as could be. The iconic cardigan, for example, was “decorated” with purposefully made holes and paired with distresses jeans or black leather pants. The silk dresses were standouts; they burst with camellia prints–the brand’s official flower–and were adorned with feathers. Short cocktail dresses boasted elaborate tiers of feathers and floral beading and Carmen Kass modeled a gorgeous strapless dress made from peach ostrich feathers (that dress was as far as “red carpet” as the collection got). For evening, black gowns were slit into strategic patterned slashes and LBDs were layered with lace and embroidery and jewelry that was magnificent: gilded, Byzantine earrings, 5 inches long, and ropes of gold chains and feathers.
