An animated Garden of Eden under the huge glass roof of the Grand Palais for the couture collection by Chanel. An animated Garden of Eden under the huge glass roof of the Grand Palais for the couture collection by Chanel. Karl Lagerfeld is inspired by nature to design silhouettes with 3D floral embroidery. The little Chanel suit this season is cropped and is made in inventive materials. The tweed is frayed, the couture bonnet with its veil, and mittens accessorize the silhouette. The colours are explosive, refreshing and vibrant. The wedding dress with its train adorned in flowers illustrates the couture know how of the ateliers and closes the show with grace. Interviews: Karl lagerfeld: It’s a nature, but not the nature that we know, because these flowers, the great God forgot to make them, it’s the flowers that we invented, you can’t come with a botanical book and say that’s that, as they have been invented, I don’t know these flowers. It’s the new décolletage, the tops, everyone has shown everything, it’s all redone, but this one is much more difficult to redo, it’s the new clevage, it’s the waist, it’s like saying today the fashion, it’s the belly button. Exactly in the same place, one year ago, I was making couture trainers that now exist everywhere, fine! But the beanie, that I see everywhere, but there isn’t a couture version, so it’s fun to do a really luxe and couture version, because it’s a thing that people love to wear, which is attractive and that you can avoid going to the hair dressers but at the same time there is a version a bit more spiritual, a bit couture. Kristen Stewart: Everyone said it was so alive, like I understand why it started with this booming garden, couture Chanel show going, “Wow it’s balanced elegance and edge, and it was progressive, but in this case I think it was sort of purely the edge bit, which I’m a fan of. Karl Lagerfeld: For example, my god, for the train on the wedding dress, it took 15 girls 1 month to create just one train. There was a girl from the Middle East who came with her mother to order it, 10 minutes ago and I’m telling you it’s not cheap… Gaspard Ulliel: It’s a bit like the Garden of Eden, at the start I don’t know where I was, it was quite cold, quite menacing in this metallic forest and then with all these flowers which opened one by one, which made me think about a painting by Douanier Rousseau straight away and after all the dresses I thought of Degas, it’s like this that we are mixing these two worlds.
Photos courtesy of brand