Barbarian Romance. Chanel Pre-Fall 2013

April 23, 2023April 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

On Monday, May 1st, the 2023 Met Gala will take place. This year’s Costume Institute exhibition, “A Line of Beauty,” will celebrate the oeuvre and life of Karl Lagerfeld. The exhibition will see Andrew Bolton and Wendy Yu, curators in charge, examine the work of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Throughout his lifetime, Lagerfeld worked at prominent fashion houses such as Balmain, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, in addition to founding his namesake brand. More than 150 pieces will be on display in the exhibition, many of which will be accompanied by Lagerfeld’s sketches. In the following days, I will look back at my all-time favorite Chanel collections, designed by the one & only Karl. Hope some of these magnificent looks will end up on the red carpet on the first Monday in May…

“Dressed to kilt.” How else was Karl Lagerfeld going to define the collection he showed for Chanel outside of Edinburgh for pre-fall 2013? The thick tweeds, the argyle knits, the charming cardigans, the man-styled essence of Chanel all came from Scotland and the time that Coco spent there with her lover the Duke of Westminster. But the fashion show’s venue was Linlithgow Palace, where Mary, Queen of Scots, was born almost seven centuries ago, and her tragic life gave Lagerfeld the perfect opportunity to gloss Chanel’s easy pragmatism with an element of doomed romance. It was a fantastic combination. Maybe that’s because it was kind of personal for the designer. The first French poem he ever learned, at the age of six, was all about Mary. Then there’s that umbilical connection between Scotland and France, which history recognizes as the Grand Alliance. And in Lagerfeld’s team, he had Sam McKnight on hair and Stella Tennant (I miss her so much) on all-round fabulosity. In other words, there was something quintessentially Scottish in the air. “Barbarian romance,” Lagerfeld called it. Linlithgow’s courtyard was lined with flaming braziers, spitting sparks into the snow flurries. Guests made their way up spiral stone stairs to the palace’s great hall and chapel, open to the heavens since marauding Hanoverians torched the building in January 1746. After the show, they made their way back down a labyrinthine wooden construction to dinner in a tented fantasia that had hardened souls gasping with wonder. With impressive ease, Lagerfeld translated the sense of occasion into something that grandly allied Chanel’s original Parisian proportions with Scottish tradition. Picture Stella Tennant in a drop-waisted kilt-pleated coat. But also imagine that kilt in chiffon and lace. And the tartans and tweeds, the Fair Isles and argyles that would have garbed lords and ladies of the glen reconfigured in languid knits and patchwork, layered in swingy jackets, accessorized as delightfully with jewels, feathered hats, flowing scarves, and patterned tights as one could wish from a collection that was created to celebrate the “métiers d’art” of the Chanel ateliers. True, there were a few costume-y moments, in which it looked like the models had slithered straight off a canvas in the National Gallery of Scotland. A final passage of white wool gowns touched with lace and feathers, meanwhile, was an almost operatic exercise in pure technique.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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What’s Hot (22.4.23)

April 22, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Saint-Tropez. Chanel Resort 2011

April 21, 2023April 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The resort 2011 scene was like something out of a quintessential Riviera movie. With the sun setting over the sea, hundreds of Chanel’s invited guests sitting in the red wooden chairs of Saint-Tropez’s famous Sénéquier, and many more onlookers piling onto balconies and pressing against barricades, Natasha Poly, Anja Rubik, Abbey Lee, and the rest of Karl Lagerfeld’s cast arrived at Quai Jean Jaurès via speedboat. And like the carefree starlets and jet-setters they were channeling, the models traipsed down the street-cum-runway often barefoot, wearing 70s-inspired diaphanous caftans, long crocheted dresses, ruffle-lapelled silk jersey trouser suits, and patchwork denim skirts. Tanned and toned midriffs peeked out beneath a cropped sweater here or a button-down there, its hems tied in a saucy bow. Freja Beha Erichsen’s white silk Mick Jagger tuxedo delivered some sun-drenched rock & roll to the French idyllic. The Rolling Stones front man, of course, married Bianca in just such an outfit in Saint-Tropez’s town hall back in 1971. Magdalena Frąckowiak, doing the brilliant Brigitte Bardot cosplay, danced her way toward the photo pit in a black and white checked maillot. And for the finale, there was Georgia May Jagger, with her dad’s tune “Let’s Spend the Night Together” for an accompaniment. The model got to take a spin in a beaded minidress and thigh-high boots on the back of a tricked-out Harley with Sebastien Jondeau. To be sure, there was a nostalgic mood to the affair. What prompted these witty nods to the past from a designer who famously had no patience for such fusty concepts as the “good old days“? The location surely had something to do with it. Though Lagerfeld pointed out that “Chanel was spotted here once in ’34 by Colette,” Saint-Tropez feels much more like his kind of town. “I spent many years of my life here,” he said. “I know Saint-Tropez like I know Paris. The collection is very casual, very down-to-earth.” Key, of course, is that lightness of touch, the sense of enjoyment and ease.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Chanel AF. Chanel SS’97 Couture

April 19, 2023April 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

First up is the stunning spring-summer 1997 haute couture collection. It’s a Lagerfeld collection that can be simply summed up as “Chanel af“. Behind the scenes, Amanda Harlech, a trusted arbiter of taste, jumped from Dior to Chanel just in time to put finishing touches on a collection of what Karl Lagerfeld described as nonexistent dresses and exploded shoes. “It’s hysterical Chanel,” the designer said. Harlech expanded on that, telling Hamish Bowles, “It’s about Chanel proportions and luxury pushed to absolute nervous-breakdown extremes!” Just as the rooms he showed in at the Ritz were veiled with tulle, so Lagerfeld wrapped his creations in luxury, replacing buttons with real pearls or diamond camellia clip brooches. Adding a sense of fun were the dramatic headpieces by Philip Treacy, some of which bobbed atop heads like antennae tuned into chic. There were LBDs galore, along with wide-legged pantsuits, however the “unbearable lightness of being” Lagerfeld was after was to be found in the evening looks, many with silhouettes that nodded to the late ’20s and early ’30s—Coco Chanel’s own heyday. Shalom Harlow wore the collection’s pièce de résistance: a feather-white strapless confection, which looked as if it were crafted from air. Over a stem of pale chiffon, the atelier had constructed a 3-D “cage” of many, many camellias made of sequins, and then cut the fabric ground away so that it resembled a Wilson Bentley photograph of a snowflake or the tracery of a stained glass window. Possibly, that’s one of the chicest collection ever in fashion history.