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Chanel: Tasteful and Refined
By: Godfrey Deeny
Photos by Gruber-FWD
Paris, Jun 22, 2002/FWD/ --- In an haute couture season dominated by exoticism and fantasy
fashion, the Chanel show staged Tuesday in Paris was a lesson in refinement and respect for
the label.
After three days of intense hues and extravagant silhouettes, the Chanel Spring/Summer 2002
collection was, at first glance, a curiously muted affair - pretty much the entire line came
in black, beige, pink or white.
But that would be to forget the sheer sophistication and good taste of these clothes, even if
they broke no new ground in fashion.
The house’s couturier Karl Lagerfeld took guests to the Tuileries to a custom-built
transparent plastic tent festooned with Coco’s trademark camellias.
The same flowers, in silk, also turned up as puffs on most models heads.
Lagerfeld opened with a half dozen black redingotes and coat dresses, so slim and
body-conscious one couldn’t help recalling the designer’s own remarkable weight-reduction
program that has seen him lose 40 kilos in one year.
The individual items were perfection itself and would flatter any of the granddames or
actresses that packed the front row.
Gwyneth Paltrow made it to her fifth show, dressed in a classic burgundy Chanel jacket in
wool boucle.
Also along in attendance were Kate Capshaw and French starlets Sandrine Kiberlin and Elsa
Zylberstein.
Security was tight at the show, with Bernadette Chirac, French president Jacques’ wife,
in the front and concern that PETA might invade another runway.
As it happened, security did scramble into action at one stage, but only to retrieve a pair
of high heels tossed aside by one model.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only glitch in show - Carmen Kass later looked very odd,
her white underwear showing through a transparent black chiffon column.
Occasionally, the excellence of the Chanel atelier was apparent, particularly in a trio of
fringed dresses embroidered with sequins that fell like raindrops.
But, overall, the collection felt, dare one whisper it, tame.
Anyway, the focus of Tuesday was never going to Chanel, but to the final collection this
evening of the retiring Yves Saint Laurent, Lagerfeld’s life-long rival ever since they
both won prizes as students back in 1954.
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