Paris Fashion Week AW 2014: Chanel

The Chanel show was an impressive tour de force. Although Karl Lagerfeld may have never set foot in a supermarket (at least in the past couple of decades), this didn't stop him from actually creating one as a setting for his Fall collection. The Chanel supermarket under the glass dome of the Grand Palais featured 500 different products that were renamed and rebranded, aisles and even a checkout counter were the invitees to the show and later the models passed with their products. The whole collection was a nod to Andy Warhol and the pop-art movement, as the designer himself stated during a fitting, "The Art one was an art supermarket, because art has become a product, no?".

I really liked the contemporary attitude of the collection, full of color and unexpected fabrics or with moth-eaten wool leggings and tweed suits paired with the sporty Chanel trainers from the House's spring Haute Couture collection. The coats were either quilted or tweed, much in the spirit of the House but also incorporating the current trend of rounded volumes. As for the jackets adorned with a corset-like waist, they have numerous zippers attached so that "if you eat too much at lunch, you can just unzip one or two", as Karl said jokingly. The collection featured wire-framed supermarket baskets fashioned in the style of the signature jacket-weighting chain, supermarket trolleys, embroideries made of scrunched scraps of metallic materials and even abstract motifs representing supermarket trolley carts. Editing such a rich collection proved to be really hard and to be honest too much editing would hurt it, so I chose to keep the most interesting looks. Have a look for yourselves:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among my favorite looks were the fabulous yellow, orange and green coats with multi-colored prints on the inside, the colorful dresses and skirts in roughly the same print but more toned down, and of course the bright pink tweed dress and suit. Did you notice the black bag resembling a carton of eggs? Karl really thought of every little detail, he must have had so much fun designing it! What do you think of the whole show?

Later on I'll show you more of this inventive supermarket setting and do a round-up of the wittily rebranded products, such as Lait de Coco or Perles de Lessive, so keep in touch!

Photos: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com