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Chanel’s Newly Minted Vintage

Karl Lagerfeld went back to the past in the latest Chanel haute couture show, entitling it New Vintage, even as he radically improved all the original ideas in this charmingly real yet faux old fashion revival.

Staged in a never-before-used-for-fashion giant hall hidden remarkably in the back of the Grand Palais, guests watched this show on Tuesday, July 3, seated on wicker chairs, as if in a very posh salon. In its now legendary determination to express Lagerfeld’s every aesthetic desires, Chanel had the entire ceiling – about six tennis courts worth – repainted in a neo classical trompe l'oeil glory.

“It is what it was not, and it could be what it has never been before,” punned fashion’s greatest talker Lagerfeld, about a fall 2012 collection that referenced vintage in every look even as it took that idea somewhere far more newly refined.

This spring, the house acquired two vintage garments by Chanel from the '30s and '50s – a coat and a dress, and they ignited the couturier’s imagination.

His smartest play was coaxing a brilliant display from the famed Chanel atelier, creating a whole series of coats that were completely made of embroidery – one demanding 3,000 hours of needlework.

“Nowadays, one can find quite well-made clothes in Zara and other chains, so for our couture clients it’s essential to create clothes that are unique. That can never be reproduced en masse,” Lagerfeld told FWD.

Harlequin patterned coats, finished in combinations of cashmere, organza and silver ribbon where particularly impressive, as were miniature check pattern suits, their edges finished with hand shredded chiffon. And, just when everyone had caught up with the huge wave of adornment that Lagerfeld had ignited at Chanel with his mega-metallic camellia-driven, Paris-Bombay multiplied Zen for multiple accessories and costume jewelry, he walks away from that whole trend in this show. Gone were the brooches, multi strands of pearls and chain belts.

Their heads covered in mesh snoods with tiny crystals, their feet anchored with tough chic metal cup heeled shoes, the models strode by in a certain faded gentility.

Shredded chiffon ran through the whole collection, a reference to Lagerfeld’s new best friend, his kitten Choupette, whose white fur inspired the ravishing white crinoline wedding dress of the finale.

“Choupette has her own two maids and eats very well. Not my food of course, but her own menu. She’s a very well kept woman and why not? They are my kinda' girl,” sniffed the designer, as over a score of camera crews waited to interview him post show.

* Chanel’s Haute Expressionist Couture		* Thom Browne Spring 2014 * Delpozo Spring 2014