Bittersweet symphony

Staged in Hamburg’s spectacular new concert hall, Chanel’s Métiers d’art show was an emotional homecoming for Karl Lagerfeld

Inside the Chanel Métiers d’art show in Hamburg, Karl Lagerfeld’s tribute to his home town.

THE LAST ENGAGEMENT on the fashion calendar is the Chanel Métiers d’art show, which happens in a Christmassy whirl. Last December, Karl Lagerfeld, the label’s creative director, staged a joyously patriotic show in the newly reopened Ritz Paris – doubly poignant for the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, whose last happy moments were spent here, and for the fact that Coco Chanel spent her final years living in the hotel.

This year, Lagerfeld moved into even more personal territory with a show in his own home town of Hamburg. The ostensible inspiration was the Hanseatic port’s status as the new cultural capital of Germany: the catwalk show was held in the Elbphilharmonie – a brand new Herzog and de Meuron concert hall and apartment block that stands on the water like a cross between a sailing ship and an iceberg. It is a stunning place with slow, curving escalators that carried a glittering crowd up to the concert hall at the heart of the building where the show took place.

But the clothes themselves – reminiscent of Coco Chanel’s own flirtation with matelot stripes and sailors’ overalls – were classic naval luxe, with thick knitted navy jumpers and officers’ insignia. Some handbags were shaped like accordions and the male models accessorised with pipes. They harked back to the Hamburg of the past – rich and elegant, but not ostentatious. ‘This isn’t a red-carpet city,’ the designer told me after the show. ‘It’s always kind of discreet… powerful though.’

‘People used to say, “Hamburg is the door to the world,”’ he continued. ‘And my mother would say “It’s just a door, go through it – get out of here… You’re not born for this world, you’d better go somewhere else.” And so I left. There was only Paris, no second choice.’

But now he’s back, and, remembering the foghorns of the ships as they left the port, he says, ‘As a child, I heard the sirens of the boats, and there was a feeling of departure and loss. And that is something melancholic and creative at the same time.’ Never has the usually matter-of-fact Lagerfeld sounded more elegiac. —Sasha Slater

Top row The collection featured nautical motifs, with sailor caps and collars, modern interpretations of matelot stripes and even tobacco pipes

Left Karl Lagerfeld takes his bow alongside his godson Hudson Kroenig, while models in the new Métiers d’art collection surround a live orchestra conducted by British cellist Oliver Coates

Above The new Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. Shot by Lady Amanda Harlech