CHANEL PUTS ON THE RITZ!
HOURS AFTER MODELS
pranced around the dining tables for the finale of Chanel’s Métiers d’art show at the Ritz in Paris last week, the after-party shifted to the Ritz bar, where an impromptu karaoke saw champagne-fuelled guests belting out the latest hits alongside the Korean K-pop megastar G Dragon and Pharrell Williams. It was a moment that echoed Coco Chanel’s café society of the 1930s, when she was at the height of her fame and took up permanent residence at the Paris Ritz. Only this was Karl Lagerfeld’s cyber café society with a who’s who of contemporary culture in the last days of 2016. Instead of Jean Cocteau and
Jean Paul Sartre, we had Cara Delevingne and Lily Rose Depp. And while 2016 can hardly be compared to the darkest days of European history that Gabrielle Chanel lived through – the Great Depression, rise of fascism and World War II – the events of the past year with terror attacks, Brexit, Donald Trump and the increasing power of the far right, the need for pure Cocoesque hedonistic glamour was lost on no one. Least of all Karl Lagerfeld, who in his mid-80s remains the master at presenting fashion as a reflection of the times.
Lagerfeld had requisitioned the entire grand hotel – recently refurbished to its former glory – which lies a stone’s throw away from the house of Chanel on Rue Cambon. (It is said that when Coco was on her way to Chanel HQ, a hotel doorman would alert her staff so that they could spritz the street with Chanel No 5 ahead of her arrival.) These days, the Ritz is home-away-from-home for the world’s mega-rich – many of them, presumably, Chanel’s most ardent customers. And if any brand can lure those cautious high-rollers back to Paris in the wake of the city’s terror attacks and restore a sense of safety, optimism and highoctane glamour, it is surely Chanel.
So with this, Lagerfeld’s sixth and final Chanel show of the year, it was a kind of homecoming for the brand that likes to travel the world. The Métiers d’art collection – otherwise known as the pre-fall which, in recent years, has toured Rome, Salzburg, Dallas and Edinburgh – is one rip-roaring showcase of the 12 Parisian craft houses (such as Lesage the embroiderers, Guillet maker of fabric flowers and the feather specialists Lemarié) that are all owned by Chanel.
The show played out in three sittings – lunch, tea and dinner – with models laughing, flirting and twirling their way through the maze of dining tables. That
the models brushing past us were in fact the house muses – Cara, Lily-rose,
illow Smith and Pharrell – alongside famous ‘kids of’ Georgia May Jagger, Levi Dylan and Sistine Stallone, taking her first turn on the catwalk, made the event all the more fun and fabulous.
As for the clothes, they were also a homecoming – a kind of Chanel history class if you like, albeit filtered through Lagerfeld’s laser-like, all-seeing, of-the-moment eye. He called it ‘Paris Cosmopolite’ with the emphasis on cosmopolitan elegance as seen on a daily basis at the Ritz. And so he whipped through all that is quintessentially Chanel – and supremely Parisian, come to think of it – from the elongated body-skimming dresses that recalled the 1930s in ivory, gold and red to the kind of nipped-waist, strong-shouldered 1940s bouclé tweed skirt suits and dramatic
ganza gowns that Madame Chanel (as famously pictured) wore while posing by grand fireplaces in the Ritz. But of course, Karl, who claims to never look back, disrupted all the grandeur with an unpredictable bomber jacket in ravaged denim here, a voluminous black puffer coat with Plexiglass buttons there. And threw in tango shoes and sequinned knickerbockers for good measure. Something for everyone – well, something for every age and taste of Chanel client.
It was the epitome of feel-good fashion – in its own intimate, ultra-exclusive, glitteringly glamorous way. And as this eventful and unsettling 2016 draws to a close, an absolute pleasure to see.