Chanel Pays Touching Tribute to the Women Behind Its Exquisite Designs
Photo: Getty Images.
The fashion world went behind the scenes at the Chanel haute couture show on Tuesday. Designer Karl Lagerfeld gave the who’s who of fashion an inside look at the house’s atelier by literally transferring it to the catwalk. Guests were arranged in amphitheater-style seating, while around the outside wall of the show venue, the work desks, Stockman dress forms, bolts of tweed, sewing machines, and every other possible item needed to create a piece of Chanel couture were on display.
More important, the real petites mains, those artisans who bring each garment to life, were also at the show. They were toiling away on pieces from the actual Fall/Winter 2016 couture collection the Chanel guests were about to see. Clearly the house was confident that this show would generate some orders. But more than that, the mise en scène was a visual and visceral homage to the brand’s most precious asset, those uniquely skilled seamstresses.
Photo: Getty Images.
It certainly caused a buzz with front row guests like Jessica Chastain, Vanessa Paradis, Milla Jovovich, and Willow Smith — who brought along her dad, Will. Paradis, in particular, felt very much at home inside the atelier environment, seeing as she’s been a regular at Chanel for most of her life and grew up surrounded by these haute couture dream weavers.
This season they concocted a collection, under the eagle-eye direction of Lagerfield, bien sûr, which had a precise and clean silhouette. The two key takeaway shapes were some seriously sharp shoulders that almost looked as if they came to a point at each end and a sweeping hemline on jackets and tops that sloped down longer in the back. And jumpsuits were something rather new to see at Chanel, formfitting at the torso and then cut cropped and loose along the legs.
Photo: Getty Images.
Also hard to miss was the abundance of tweed. Even for Chanel, which counts tweed fabric as part of its DNA, this collection’s tweed options were far-reaching. They shimmered with metallic yarns, came covered in delicate floral embroideries, or were finished off with geometric beadwork embellishments. Chanel’s couture clients will find it hard not to fall in love with at least one of the tweed treatments Lagerfeld presented.
The famed Chanel accessories that always give a cute spin to each show’s chosen theme were nowhere to be seen — no sewing machine bags or thimble clutches. Instead, Lagerfeld went with high, ruched black boots and gloves, and a black bow headband with cotton-candy curls piled atop most models’ heads. And in this way, he focused all the audience’s attention on the outfits, where his artisans’ talents were on fine display.
In a heartwarming move at the end of the show, Lagerfeld didn’t take a bow all on his own. Instead, as he walked the circular catwalk, he pulled out the four women, Chanel’s “premières” in each area of couture creation, to take a bow with him. This brand would be nothing without the hard work of these women, and Lagerfeld wanted the world to finally pay its respects to the role they play in Chanel’s success story.
