Chanel and Lagerfeld in London

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Beehives and big bags at Lagerfeld's first London show: Chanel's top designer pulls in British devotees with a beautiful collection

Hadley Freeman Deputy fashion editor
7 December 2007
The Guardian


© Copyright 2007. The Guardian. All rights reserved.

The quilted bags were big but the blow dries were bigger. In the foyer of a London auction house yesterday, Chanel's most devoted British customers showed that it would take more than rain to stop them from adhering to the most entrenched stereotypes about a typical fashion show audience.

While waiters served brightly coloured macaroons, everyone, including Naomi Campbell, a woman not known for her patience, seemed perfectly content to wait out the requisite 45-minute delay before the start of the first ever Chanel show in London.
Although the traditional fashion weeks take place in September and February, such restrictions have never hemmed in Chanel's indefatigable designer, Karl Lagerfeld, who sporadically stages extra shows to celebrate the seemingly endless lines he does for the venerable French label. Since 2002 this has included an extra show every year for what he calls his Metiers d'Art collection, created specifically to showcase the skills of the Parisian ateliers that work with the company, providing the label with intricate jewels and sculpted shoes.
Every year Lagerfeld has staged the show in a different city and this year it was London's turn, a fact which Lagerfeld rather endearingly worked into the collection itself amid all the jewels and sparkles.
While guests sat on gold chairs whose backs mimicked clothes hangers - perhaps in an attempt to put everyone in a shopping sort of mood - the first models came out dangling tiny evening bags splashed with the union flag. A little more subtly, and prettily, their hair was all swept up into oversized Amy Winehouse-style beehives. But unlike Winehouse's they were trimmed with jewels and, more importantly, looked recently washed.
The clothes, too, frequently had a British theme. The opening outfits - knee-length simple skirts or blouson culottes, piles of tweed jackets, thick black tights, simple pea coats and shiny loafers - made the models resemble English schoolgirls, albeit conspicuously well-dressed ones, with jewellery that looked a little finer than the sort available in Claire's Accessories. The leather coats and sharp jackets, often accessorised with fingerless gloves or jewelled feather dusters, seemed to be paying homage to the Clash and other 1970s British punk icons.
The live music was provided by Sean Lennon and the latest model girlfriend of Pete Doherty and face of Topshop - no, not that model, but her friend, Romanian-born Irina Lazareanu. Well, surely with those accolades she's an honorary Brit.
But leaving aside the nationalistic nods, the clothes were beautiful, better than much of what has been seen on the Chanel catwalks for a season or two. Perhaps because this was a show with such a heavy customer presence, Lagerfeld toned down his occasional impulse to make gimmicky clothes for sylph-like teenagers, such as the denim bikinis and tweed hotpants he showed in the mainline collection for next season, and concentrated on making things his monied and older customer base would want to buy. The simple knee-length black coats, lying strictly against the body and then kicking out, were flattering and, like much in the show, festooned with delicate jewels, while gold discs at the top of an evening gown lay as smoothly as the gills of a fish.

More info on: http://www.chanel.com/