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Chanel Couture : Heads or Tails, You... Loose

Karl Lagerfeld gambled with a whole new silhouette and proportion in Chanel’s latest haute couture runway show Tuesday night, July 7, and though he came up with some remarkable looks, this heads or tails collection was ultimately not a winner.

You could fault the staging, four massive white Chanel No. 5 perfume bottles smack under the glass cupola of the Grand Palais, out of which emerged an ideal casting of the current crop of catwalk models. But the key idea in this fall 2009 collection, adding fabric extensions to dresses, coatdresses and gowns, frequently looked ill proportioned, even contrived.

It’s all very well adding a fish tail to a classic Coco suit or gentlemanly tails or Belle Époque dress and gussying them up with silver lining, but if the net effect is that models waddle rather than walk, then the result is not so chic.

That said, we did see lots of beautiful clothes, in particular a flared dress of horizontal ribbons worn with a sleeveless jacket, delightful ruffled blouses and some remarkable shaggy chiffon cocktails that had all the delicacy that one expects from Chanel. Plus, Mark Rothko-style abstract sequined dresses had tremendous pizzazz, and Lagerfeld remains fashion’s acknowledged master when it comes to creating flesh colored looks, like the exquisite trio of embroidered cocktail, column and Grecian goddess outfits that had the massed ranks of photographers snapping furiously.

There was also a neat retro futurist moment, like the gray bouclé ensemble with horseshoe neckline, worn by beauty Abbey Lee, or a Princess Leila on Park Avenue ecru wool suit on new gal Yulia Lobova.

The couturier also dreamed up a great new accessory, the finger glove, consisting of micro tubes for each of your digits in silk or leather.

On the applause-meter, Lagerfeld received a respectable amount of clapping, though the event did end with a faintly absurd moment as a score of black-clad heavies dashed onto the set and scrambled together a security line. A tad undignified and more modern Keystone Cops than classic Coco Chanel.

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