Virginie Viard gave us a meditation on attract – that elusive high quality of all iconic Chanel ladies. What’s attract and who has? Coco Chanel had it in spades, dictating fashion, creating tendencies and formulating a complicated model of French stylish which survives to this present day. Karl Lagerfeld introduced a vivid, bigger than life attract to Chanel and Virginie Viard presents her personal modern-day model, channelling the Nouvelle Imprecise (she referenced Alain Resnais’ , the 1961 movie for which Gabriel Chanel designed costumes) and name-checked her Chanel predecessors, saying she needed to channel “The attract in line with Gabrielle Chanel, Karl, the evening, feathers, sequins, heels: I prefer it when issues get combined up.”
Hers is a Chanel very a lot of as we speak, centered on trendy ladies and what they need from garments. The inclusion of various physique shapes on the catwalk indicators that Chanel speaks to all ladies, not simply the thin gamines.
She devoted the gathering to Kristen Stewart, who wears Chanel with such easy ease. “Whether or not it’s her, or the opposite ladies I gown, I must really feel that they like the garments anyway. However, of the individuals round me, she is the closest to Gabrielle Chanel, not less than to my thought of her. She understands Chanel, its garments. And along with her, it turns into much more trendy. This assortment, it’s additionally her.”
Stewart’s masculine/female qualities and her love of quick skirts and scorching pants performed out alongside loads of bows, boas and rhinestones.
This assortment majored in bedazzled tweeds (in black white or pastel pink) and glowing sneakers (together with a glittering pair of these cult block heeled sling-backs). Further flounce was offered by dancing clouds of ostrich feathers embroidered onto tweed jackets. Chanel’s iconic tweed, additionally got here in a brief and candy ivory coat-dress incarnation modelled by Stewart in a pre-show black and white teaser movie, projected onto the auditorium’s curving partitions. There have been many nods to Stewart’s tomboy fashion. Viard struck a garçon notice with lace trimmed boxer shorts, and addressed trendy attractive -but-easy gown codes with stretchy knit co-ords. Then she countered all of it with superb glimmering lamé – an unadulterated second of Chanel glamour.
The present ended with a crescendo of black night seems to be – every one completely different and ideal in their very own method – from sheer chiffon seems to be slouch trousers and jacket, to lace trimmed night shorts, glimmering tweed skater clothes and mini clothes festooned with grosgrain bows. It was very Chanel. And really alluring.
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