Designer shuns pop spectacle of previous years to celebrate his craft, in a Paris haute couture week notable for anti-elitist moves
In recent seasons, Chanel catwalk productions have transformed Paris’s Grand Palais into a supermarket, an airport, a Paris bistro, an iceberg, a fairground carousel, the interior of a jet, an art gallery and a casino. Karl Lagerfeld, the fashion house’s creative director, is a man for whom fashion is an endless parlour game, a visual feast of in-jokes. The supermarket show featured Coco-pop cereal, shopping baskets suspended from chain straps used for 2.55 bags, and Rihanna posing in a shopping trolley.
But for the Chanel haute couture catwalk show on Tuesday, Lagerfeld took fashion literally, for once. The setting was a recreation of the ateliers at the Rue Cambon where the collections are made, complete with desks and dummies, mirrors and pattern-cutting tables.
Continue reading...