Chanel’s Rome fashion show
Kroenig. e, cturers Actress Kristen Stewart is the face of the Metiers d’Art ad campaign.
What can’t Karl Lagerfeld do? The fashion designer — who works on three brands, including his own — once again plays film director with his latest short film, Once and Forever. In the film, Kristen Stewart is a snippy actress playing a young Coco Chanel (her co-star, Geraldine Chaplin, plays an actress playing an older Coco; Chaplin actually played Coco in Lagerfeld’s 2013 film, The Return. Meta, much?).
“She played it really, really mean,” Lagerfeld told Vogue in August, after wrapping the shoot at French director Luc Besson’s studio.
The film was revealed at Chanel’s ParisRome Metiers d’Art show in Rome, the French label’s annual celebration of its artisans’
Actress Rooney Mara. intricate work that falls somewhere in between pret and couture. (Metiers d’Art reportedly employs 2,000 workers internationally.)
Staged at the Cinecitta studios in Rome (the storied film location for Cleopatra, Ben-Hur and La Dolce Vita), the show diverged from the usual concept of celebrating the host nation (previous editions have included Salzburg and Scotland) by celebrating Paris on a perfect mock-up set in the studio.
The timing could only have been coincidental, coming as it did only three weeks after the Paris attacks (it took the Chanel team six weeks to construct the set) Karl, but the full-size cafes, Metro stations and streetlamps were especially poignant.
The 86 looks were divine — sexy, with an air of “walk of shame” as the Daily Telegraph put it, with mussed beehives and smudgy eye make-up lending a morningafter-the-night-before feel — and utterly modern, even while drawing upon Bardot and early 1960s Italian cinema. Fun fact: Coco designed for French actresses Romy Schnieder and Anouk Aimee in Italian films of the era.
Black lace, patent leather and Chanel quiting and tweed were in abundance.
Models including Lara Stone and Bella Hadid (making her Chanel debut) walked the runway, while 800 VIP guests, customers and editors crowded the studio for the event.