Chanel steals the thunder before the Cannes Film Festival with its cruise show at the Cap d'Antibes on Monday night
Chanel Cruise show was staged on Monday evening, followed by a film by Karl Lagerfeld. The exquisite white satin gowns on the catwalk - evocative of Twenties and Thirties Riviera glamour, when Coco Chanel partied with Picasso and Dalí alongside Russian exiles, American heiresses and British aristocrats - appeared again in Lagerfeld's movie, which featured a tangle of beautiful people (including several Chanel models) in a Cap d'Antibes mansion.
Lagerfeld's film and Cruise collection used the Riviera landscape as an integral part of the action. Thus the catwalk was a dove-grey carpet, unfolding at the end of white steps leading down into gardens scented with umbrella pines, towards the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.
Chanel Cruise show was staged on Monday evening, followed by a film by Karl Lagerfeld. The exquisite white satin gowns on the catwalk - evocative of Twenties and Thirties Riviera glamour, when Coco Chanel partied with Picasso and Dalí alongside Russian exiles, American heiresses and British aristocrats - appeared again in Lagerfeld's movie, which featured a tangle of beautiful people (including several Chanel models) in a Cap d'Antibes mansion.
Lagerfeld's film and Cruise collection used the Riviera landscape as an integral part of the action. Thus the catwalk was a dove-grey carpet, unfolding at the end of white steps leading down into gardens scented with umbrella pines, towards the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.
"This is about the women of Cannes, women who mix bathing suits with real pearls and diamonds," said Lagerfeld after the show. "After all, you can't wear fakes into the water."
Many of the jewels on the catwalk - diamond comets and stars among them - were inspired by Coco Chanel's designs in 1932, launched as an antidote to the gloom of the Depression.As for the clothes,fluid evening dresses were equally suggestive of that era and a style characterized by Chanel at the time as "candid innocence and white satin". Yet now, as then, there was proof that even the most ethereal fashion can have real staying power.
The collection itself will be perfect for the clients who were also watching beneath white sun umbrellas - Monaco royals, global fashion aficionados and the new Riviera habitués.
