Spotlight: Chanel Couture Spring 2016
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo courtesy of Chanel
Photo Credit: Stacy Fuller
Photo Credit: Stacy Fuller
Photo Credit: Lea Colombo
Photo Credit: Stacy Fuller
Photo Credit: Olivier Saillant
We’re in the middle of nowhere in a dream house that should be a reality,” said Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld while standing inside the verdant set he designed for the Grand Palais in Paris where he showed his spring 2016 couture collection on Tuesday, January 26. “Magazines, everything now is about ecology but it’s never done in a very luxurious way,” he noted. “I like the idea to take ecology one step further and to make a high fashion, very elegant, very luxurious version of it. And to do beautiful embroideries with wood, straw and things like this.” Indeed, Chanel models wearing cork-soled shoes and dresses embroidered with such materials emerged from a modernist wooden house built behind a sprawling green lawn as guests including Gwyneth Paltrow, Diane Kruger, Cara Delevigne, and Melanie Laurent looked on.
“We had to make everything because there are no sequins in wood and pieces like this or straw or anything,” Lagerfeld said, explaining that normally embroidery can be done on existing material, then added to designs. “We had to create the material because those things don’t exist. The craftsmanship is quite, I don’t even know how the people have the patience to do it. It’s easy for me to say ‘let’s do, let’s do,’ but they have to do it,” he added.
For his latest couture collection, designed in mostly neutral tones (shades the French fashion house called mocha, dove, putty, ecru, sand, and ivory), the atelier seamstresses created a trove of embroideries that culminated in an elegantly austere bridal gown and hooded jacket encrusted with bits of chiffon, leather, wood shavings, beads, and rhinestones. Lagerfeld, reflecting on his color palette, noted, “In the 1920s, Chanel was called the ‘Queen of the Beige,’ and I had never done a beige collection like this. He compared the “quite pure” lines of the dresses to the set design, a structure that he called “very pure, very Zen.” And with that, a new chapter of ecologically-minded style has begun.
By Elizabeth Varnell
Pictured: A look from the Chanel couture spring 2016 presentation at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Photo courtesy of Chanel
