Karl Lagerfeld looked to the skies for Chanel's couture show in Paris this morning, with an elaborate show staged in a Chanel-branded aeroplane.
France may have lost its triple A credit status, but the country has a new luxury national airline, albeit one that's currently piloted by a designer and staffed by models. Don't bank on it ever taking off on time.
It took builders five days to construct the Air Chanel plane - set, deep in the bowels of the Grand Palais. While other designers are scaling back drastically, withdrawing altogether or exploring the "show-sentation", with varying degrees of success, Chanel's finances cascade into its couture.
They'll be tweeting about that plane for days, along with the Alice Dellal-inspired, gravity defying hair - which allows Karl Lagerfeld to concentrate on largely gimmick free clothes. Not that Lagerfeld can't do jokes, but Chanel is one house to which the couture clients still flock for wardrobe staples - in as far as any couture clients ever flock.
I walked in behind one: a slim woman in sparkling Chanel tweeds, garnished with a tan coloured crocodile Birkin and a headscarf. She doesn't want hilarity with her couture, she wants classics, which is largely what this flight's menu offered.
"I didn't want to make it too literal, " said Lagerfeld backstage. "If you look at what air hostesses really wore back in the '60s, it wasn't that great".
The references may have been light, but short-sleeved, slim tweed dresses, just above the knee, block-coloured and with rouleau necklines, were imbued with the aerodynamic neatness of old airline uniforms - an impression reinforced by the strappy, mid- height glittery court shoes.
Along with all the other houses, Chanel is clearly no longer in the business of selling much couture daywear. The main focus was on cocktail and full-blown evening dresses. These were lovely, as Chanel's couture eveningwear invariably is - and somewhat familiar. That means bead smothered bodices and the "evening" suit, a full-length slim skirt, in filmy chiffons or sequined boucle with a matching cardigan-jacket that's emerging as a favourite nighttime look in Paris this week.
Blue - the colour of sky - was the favourite hue, in all its shades from chalcedony to Pan-Am and midnight. Bags were replaced by ubiquitous pockets - some of them built-into the drop waistbands.
As Coco realised back in the '30s, pockets are key to achieving a slouchy, laid back look. And planes, as far as Lagerfeld is concerned, are a handy aid to relaxing. "I love flying. It's the one time I can escape. I don't have to talk; everyone around me is watching screens. I can be alone. It's perfect". Assume he is not flying Easyjet.
