Couture Fashion Week 2013: Chanel, Dior, and Ulyana Sergeenko

Click here for previous Chanel posts. 

Chanel's Mary Queen Of Scots collection last season was fantastic, so I can only assume that Karl Lagerfeld used up his yearly quota of awesome on that one. Bearing in mind that this is a Couture show, one would think that it would be better than Pre-Fall. Not so. Instead, the theme (Weimar Germany... something...?) was unclear at best, and totally absent at worst As a kind of psychological palate-cleanser, I'm going to start this post with the ugliest outfit of the show, just so we can get it over with and move on to better things:

This looks like someone put a bunch of lei garlands in a blender, spackled them all over a tube dress, and accessorised it with an apron jacket worn by a Midwestern housewife in the 1980s. Karl Lagerfeld, what were you thinking?

Chanel Pre-Fall 2013: Lagerfeld, King of Scots?

Click here for previous Chanel posts.

As a Scot, I can be kind of snobbish about supposedly Scottish-themed fashion shows. However, this season's Chanel managed to avoid any of the expected ugly-tartan pitfalls and turned out to be just as spectacular as last year's Pre-Fall India collection. I suspect this is partly down to the fact that Karl Lagerfeld has the luxury of visiting Imaginary Scotland, which is significantly different from Real Scotland in that it primary contains castles and expensive whisky rather junkies, mud, and football hooliganism. Had it not been snowing on the night of the show, I can only assume that Lagerfeld would've hired kilt-wearing male models to grate ice-cubes onto the audience from the parapets above.

pics from Style.com

One of the problems with the backwards nature of fashion seasons is that when you're looking at Summer clothes it's usually Winter in real life, meaning that one's critical faculties are occasionally taken over by thoughts like: "WHY would anyone want to wear a floral miniskirt when everything is so damn cold?" Not so in this case, wherein the "Pre-Fall" (ie, Summer, as we would say in non-Fashionese) collection looks entirely suitable for the weather we're having in real life. I found it immensely comforting to know that all the models striding through the chilly hallways of Linlithgow castle got to wear flat shoes and blankets instead of looking knock-kneed and frostbitten as they so often do.

Chanel, Spring 2013: At least there's no iceberg this time?

Click here for previous posts on Chanel.

What's the theme of this season's show? You know there must be one, because Karl Lagerfeld is in charge. This time last year it was an Under The Sea theme featuring Florence Welch emerging from a conch shell, but this one is a little more obscure. I'm going to let you mull it over a bit and then reveal the truth after the cut, so for now just take a gander at this outfit and try to divine its ~hidden meaning~.

pics from Style.com

Of all the challenges one has to face in order to reach the Fashionista's Stone, Lagerfeld's would surely be the Snape-style brain-teaser that relies too heavily on metaphor. Actually, the idea of Lagerfeld as Fashion Snape is worryingly believable... 

Chanel: Cruise 2013 at Versailles.

Previously: See the Chanel tag for further reports on Karl Lagerfeld's forays into a variety of intriguing design themes that usually boil down to "I'm stupendously rich."

Karl Lagerfeld and the court of Versailles -- to be honest, I can't believe this hadn't happened before. Lagerfeld, with his ever-present chalk-white ponytail, aura of eccentric aristocracy, and conscious detachment from the everyday wants and needs of the proles, couldn't fit in any better if he tried.

Studio photos from Chanel's lookbook; show photos from Style.com.

This being Chanel, the eighteenth-century French influences only went so far. For all that Lagerfeld adores extravagance when it comes to showmanship, he still adheres to the relatively sedate and conservative Chanel ethos. While this show was rather more cheeky and street-cool than many recent Chanel collections, it was mostly restricted to a calming colour palette of fondant-like pastels in Chanel-favoured fabrics.

Links post: 18th century Danish face-coverings, Tom Hiddleston & Michelle Dockery: time travelers, Alexander McQueen's "Alien" shoes, and more.

The above picture is from Trine Søndergaard's photo series on strude, the complex scarves and hoods worn by 18th century women on the small Danish island of Fano to protect their faces from the elements. There's a full gallery of these photos at her website -- stunning, and quite the most interesting alternative to a balaclava that I've ever seen.

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Not precisely fashion, but definitely clothing: Iceland's necropants. Magic trousers made from... human skin. I wish I'd known about this when I was in Iceland! It sounds like the best museum ever.

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Alexander McQueen is known for beautifully bizarre couture, and for me this particular work of his is a real delight. I wish I'd known about it last week, in fact -- shoes inspired by the movie Alien:

Chanel Fall 2012: Geological reports from the Fortress of Solitude.

Previously on Chanel: Karl Lagerfeld, Lord of the Sea addresses the proletariat via harp and conch-shell, and Karl Lagerfeld has never been to India but let's just gloss over that, shall we?

"Diverse" isn't a word that springs to mind when thinking of Chanel, but this collection was extraordinarily varied. The 68 looks ranged from billowing, translucent dresses to armour-like metallic suits, so it was just as well that the theme was easy to pick out: gems. A perfect opportunity for writers to start in on a seemingly endless wave of puns like so many Carrie Bradshaws. Look no further than this review, which summarises the show as "A gem of a collection... Solid as a rock." Just let me get my geological hammer to break into this treasure trove of -- oh, never mind.

Aside from the eyebrows, makeup was minimal. Having Vulcan brows made from tiny rocks glued onto their faces gave the models an especially stern look, adding to the typically aloof Chanel mood. I can just imagine Karl backstage: "Eyebrows are the true source of expression, but why should a Chanel Woman tempt wrinkles when she can communicate directly via the resonance of crystals? The Chanel Woman does not WEAR the diamond, she IS the diamond!"

Chanel Pre-Fall 2012: Karl Lagerfeld has never been to India but let's just gloss over that, shall we?

Previously on Chanel: Karl Lagerfeld, Lord of the Sea, addresses the proletariat via harp and conch shell.

Chanel's Pre-Fall 2012 collection surprised me on two counts:

1. While this line is "India-inspired" (instant alarm bells, especially since Karl Lagerfeld has never been to India) it doesn't seem like the creepy cultural appropriation that typically results from this kind of idea. Of course, come 2012 real-time -- as opposed to fashion-time, which operates approximately six months in everyone else's future -- I fully expect to see a whole host of mildly-racist photoshoots in Vogue, Elle, etc. (If this sounds like cynicism, that's because it is. I'll be sure to get back to you in six months if the world of high-end magazine photography has managed to align itself with the cultural mores of the 21st century by then, but I doubt it.)
2. Against all fashion-world logic, this show is actually more interesting than Chanel' Spring 2012 line, despite the fact that Pre-Fall isn't a "real" season.

Thankfully, Lagerfeld resisted the temptation to give the models an India-inspired setting, restraining himself to an opulent banquet hall including a Chanel-brand miniature railway carrying decanters round and round the central table as the audience gazed on wistfully from afar, tragically decanter-less. I suspect that the audience couldn't see the lower half of the outfits over the top of their banquet tables, but I doubt any of them complained within earshot of Lagerfeld.

The looks ranged from quite obviously India-inspired to classic Chanel designs such as the kind of fitted, boxy skirt-suits that tend to send me to sleep. There were some rather pretty ones this season, but I'm only posting one of them because you know what a skirt suit looks like already, come on:

All catwalk photos from Style.com

CHANEL: Karl Lagerfeld, Lord of the Sea addresses the proletariat via harp and conch-shell.

I don't actually like Chanel very much, but I sure as hell love Karl Lagerfeld. He's like the Chuck Norris of fashion, in the purest pop-culture sense that you probably don't want to hear his opinions on politics or society but he's sure as hell a crazy crazy badass. The eternal question is, is Karl Lagerfeld taking the piss? Answer: Never. OR: Always. Possibly both. Because he's Karl Lagerfeld. He's known for saying things like "I have no human feelings," and "If you throw money out of the window throw it out with joy. Don’t say 'one shouldn’t do that' - that is bourgeois." He does not operate by normal human rules.

In characteristically overblown style, Lagerfeld's Chanel Spring 2012 show involved a vast array of expensive paraphernalia, including but not limited to: a set designed around the theme "under the sea" (but in pure snow white, because colours are gauche), Florence Welch rising out of a giant half-shell to sing during the show, Lagerfeld playing (or perhaps just posing beside) a snow-white harp, and models toting giant iridescent conch-shells. Lagerfeld spits upon the recession. He can't see it through his sunglasses, which are treated so as to only show the rich, the thin, and the monochromatic. The thing that makes Lagerfeld a great designer rather than a mere attention seeker, though, is that while loves nothing more than to make a spectacle of both himself and his catwalk shows, the clothes themselves are the precise opposite of loud.

Photo: Patrick Kovarik, Getty Images

I'm glad they really hammered home the Under The Sea message, because the sparkly-clean whiteness of the set-design was almost overwhelmingly reminiscent of ice and snow. In close-up shots where Florence Welch and her seashell have been cropped out and all you can see is white dresses and white backdrop, it's hard not to be reminded of all those idiotic "wintry" magazine editorials where a model in a bikini and a fur stole lies supine on an ice-floe while glowering sexily at a snow-leopard or fir tree.

Photos from Style.com

"Vanity is the healthiest thing in life"-- Karl Lagerfeld