Paris Fashion Week: Chanel in a haystack
PARIS (AP) - The barn is the last place you’d expect to find a Chanel girl, but models at the luxury superpower’s spring-summer 2010 ready-to-wear show came popping out of an enormous haystack dressed in what the French might call “chic rustique.”
Wearing linen skirt suits and dresses covered with delicate lace, some with gilded chaffs of wheat in their loosely coifed chignons, the models paraded around the centerpiece — a wooden barn festooned with flowers.
“I’m from the country, darling,” Lagerfeld told The Associated Press in an interview. “I hear all this talk about organic farming and the environment and things, and I’m all for it. But there must be a certain sophistication, so it’s not used as an excuse to let things go to seed,” he said.
Not a chance. Lagerfeld once again proved he’s an inexhaustible wellspring of creativity, coming up with infinite variations on the house’s trademark tweed skirt suit, this time in straw-colored tweed and linen. There were also wide-cut linen trousers with gold buttons up the outside seam and little cocktail dresses with bell-shaped skirts. A tan sheath dress was covered by a layer of what looked like woven rattan.
The seasons were out of whack at Paris Fashion Week. Phoebe Philo was welcomed back like a prodigal daughter on Monday when she unveiled her debut collection for the luxury label Celine in a packed venue near the Ritz in Paris. For next spring-summer, she presented clean and unfussy lines using lots of glove-smooth leather for body-hugging short-sleeved tops worn over fluid, wide pants in honey and flesh tones.
Her former boss at Chloe, Stella McCartney presented her collection earlier Monday with her characteristic blend of sharp masculine tailoring with femininity, featuring jackets without lapels in crisp shantung over high-waisted wrap trousers alongside wisteria print sundresses and denim skirts with strappy low wedgies inspired by her late mother Linda.
Marcel Marongui at Guy Laroche imagined a woman lost in the desert. The look was sexy, even raunchy, while remaining practical and wearable, and did not resort to baring lingerie as seen all over the catwalks.
Hanny MacGibbon for Chloe cannibalized heavily on nubby ponchos and oversized men’s blazers. The best pieces include the diaphanous dresses in featherweight plissed chiffon which were casual, girly, romantic and light.
Leonard’s founder Daniel Tribouillard found a new source of inspiration for the house’s famous prints: the fine traditional Imari porcelain of Japan’s second city Kyoto, which mingles cobalt, indigo and navy blues with brilliant white.
Neo-romantic Italian designer Giambattista Valli sent out bold dresses in the 1950s style coats in a graphic black-and-white print and a sizable contingent of oversized ocelot prints.
Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint Laurent focused on a vaguely Puritanical feeling with apron dresses, high collars, full sleeves and all that starch poplin. But the ankle-length white skirt dotted with oversized strawberry applique was the sole eyebrow-raisers.
Designer Veronique Leroy turned the patterned silks and jerseys into floaty maxi scarf dresses, short sundresses and wide-legged jumpsuits, shown on fresh-faced models with loose, long hair.
