Parisian sweet-shop couture at Chanel
Lagerfeld shows feminine isn’t dead, and the hatwith-veil reminds us what we did before Photoshop, says Lisa Armstrong
Six weeks ago in Hamburg, Karl Lagerfeld designed a monochromatic collection for Chanel’s Métiers d’art line, which will reach the shops in May. That was then. This newest collection, couture spring/summer 2018, ready to be ordered by clients now and delivered to them in six to eight weeks (so around the same time as Métiers d’art but at an even higher price point since it’s all individually made to measure and made by hand), couldn’t have been more contrasting. If Métiers d’art tapped into an ultrachic distillation of Hamburg tropes, including Beatles caps, fishermen’s jumpers, Bretons and sailor-style peacoats (the results looked like a raid on Jane Birkin’s wardrobe), this show was firmly the Paris of Leslie Caron, back when she was a ballerina. Even the setting was Paree, The 1950s Movie. The Grand Palais had been transformed into an idealised Parisian park, one where roses clamber up green trellises and park keepers don’t yell at you for disturbing the gravel.
The spring/ summer 2018 couture Chanel suit comes in almond pinks, violet creams, lemon meringues… you name the bonbon, Chanel’s tweed suppliers had recreated it in wool, silk or Lurex threads. This, in itself, is an art.
The eveningwear was just as sugary, but with an extra glaze of teeny hand-sewn beads. Shin-length boots with sculpted, Perspex wedgeheels matched the clothes and were either beaded or tweed. Sheer silk chiffon skirts fluttered beneath slim tweed coat-jackets or frothed over embroidered mini sheath dresses, seemingly held in place with a single magenta satin ribbon. Other notable accessories included flower topknots with teeny mesh veils – not hats exactly, not even fascinators, but a nostalgic reminder that, in the days before everyone could manipulate their own pictures via dozens of phone apps, a sliver of strategically positioned net performed a similar lightdiffusing service.
Apart from some oversized, curved shoulders, this was a straightforwardly pretty, feminine reading of women, so intensely sweet that merely looking at it made you anxious for your next diabetes test. Even Karl Lagerfeld’s new hipsteresque beard, perfect in its even silveriness, appeared to have been dusted with icing sugar.
There will be endless debates this year and beyond about what femininity looks like now: for some women, this pastel millefeuille of ruffles and silk won’t be the answer. There were signs that even Lagerfeld needed to take a rain check every so often: occasionally, amid the twinkling, shimmering sweeties, an all-black outfit appeared – the equivalent of coffee beans on a crowded perfume counter. (Those shin boots, somewhat tricky in tufty tweeds, looked infinitely sharper in black patent).
But couture clients are not most women. Seeing them at a 10am show on a cold, grey day in January, draped in diamonds and cream mink jackets and bare legs bound in gladiator sandals, it’s clear that this iteration of Chanel will solve their sartorial dilemmas.
And for those who prefer a darker, sportier, more androgynous rendering of Chanel, there’s always that Métiers d’art, Hamburg collection. In many ways, that seems truer to the gamine, pared-back aesthetic of Coco herself. But the power of Chanel is its seemingly infinite ability to regenerate itself between the myriad collections it now produces each year – and its indefatigable creative director, who, aged 84, continues to oversee them all.