CHANEL
KARL’S RITZ CRACKER
Karl Lagerfeld is the star. Just when everyone else gets excited about another designer, Lagerfeld comes back with a one-two punch that knocks his audience right off their gilded chairs. The spring couture collection he presented for Chanel Tuesday morning was that almost-impossible combination: Chic and hip.
As usual, the jacket is all. This season, Lagerfeld likes to fit it like a glove and decorates it with a broad gold belt with jewels and pearl clasps. Under it, there’s a new long silk georgette skirt slit to the moon. It may not fly with real customers, but it sure looked fun. “I saw a lot of long this summer, but it looked very sloppy,” Karl said before the show. “This is a sophisticated version.”
Just as smart were Karl’s saucy knee-length skirts and his new narrow pants with the slightest flare. These aren’t for ladies with big hips — or any hips, for that matter. But one of Lagerfeld’s great charms is that he keeps Chanel current — and Mod is in the air, even at the rarefied heights of haute couture.
In many ways, this collection was a play on that snobbery, from the piled-up hair (inspired by a mistress of Louis XIV) to the new “sharp shoulder” Lagerfeld spent weeks developing. Even Karl’s setting, three connecting suites at the Ritz hotel, harked back to an earlier, much more refined age. There were no runway theatrics, and you could actually see every twist and turn of Karl’s inventive mind. To heighten the drama, he even insisted that the city of Paris turn on the lights in the Place VendOme, a whimsy which took months of weaving through the French bureaucracy to realize.
When it came to evening, Lagerfeld’s creative juices were a little clogged. The simpler looks, especially a stunning ivory sequined evening jacket over a matching dress or a white floppy-collared jacket with a long black silk skirt, showed admirable restraint and real style. But near the end of a near-perfect collection, Lagerfeld got carried away with too many coq feathers, too many tiers of tulle and too many drop-waisted dresses that screamed, “Chica-chica boom!” But what the hell! If couture really is on its way out, Karl should enjoy it while he — and we — still can.